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"Simply sharp" brand / THU 1-4-24 / Tech giant in New Taipei City / Something broken after regulation, say / Longtime watch brand for James Bond / Big name in family singers / Moving target in a heist film / Bird depicted on a rare penny / 36:1, for snake eyes
Thursday, January 4, 2024
Constructor: Chase Dittrich and Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- MOM AND POP (17A: CAROL BRADY) (Carol Brady is a TV "MOM" and cola is a kind of soda "POP")
- RACK AND RUIN (26A: MOOSE ANTLERS) (moose antlers are a "RACK" and to mar something is to "RUIN" it)
- PART AND PARCEL (40A: ACTING ROLE) (an acting role is a "PART" and an acre is a "PARCEL" of land)
- PROS AND CONS (51A: SACRAMENTO KINGS) (the Sacramento Kings are basketball "PROS" and scams are "CONS")
- CUT AND RUN (64A: TOP ROUND STEAK) (top round steak is a "CUT" of meat and trot is a horse gait akin to a (slowish) "RUN" (I think))
SoBe (stylized as SoBe) is an American brand of teas, fruit-juice blends and enhanced water beverages owned by PepsiCo. The name SoBe is an abbreviation of South Beach, named after the upscale area located in Miami Beach, Florida. In the past, the SoBe name has also been licensed for gum and chocolate products. SoBe switched from glass bottles to plastic bottles for all of its beverages in 2010. // SoBe began as the South Beach Beverage Company, a drink manufacturer based in Norwalk, Connecticut from 1996 to 2001. It was founded by Kevin McGovern, and co-founded by John Belloand Tom Schwalm in 1995. Their first product was SoBe Black Tea 3G which contained ginseng, guarana, and ginkgo. It proved to be popular and led to the introduction of other flavors. The company was bought by PepsiCo in October 2000. (wikipedia)
• • •
The other two big issues were even bigger issues, in that they crossed each other. I had ROCK AND ROLL for that second themer, before realizing it made no sense for the clue ([MOOSE ANTLERS]). Then I got the RACK part but (again, I swear to you) I had RACK AND ... and no idea where I could go if the next word was not PINION (and it wasn't). RACK AND ... RUIN!? I guess I've heard that phrase. Why do I want the "Rack" in that case to be "Wrack"!?? To make matters worse, I had no idea what the heist film answer was (ARMORED CAR): me, a person who has watched scores of heist films, who (re-)watched one Just Last Night: Drive, starring Ryan Gosling (2011). Well, I'm not sure Drive is a "heist film" per se, since it doesn't focus on the details of the robberies and Ryan Gosling's character does not participate in the jobs except as the driver, but anyway, the point is, heist films are my wheelhouse. I kind of resent the clue here, which is what threw me off (10D: Moving target in a heist film). You see, no one targets a *moving* ARMORED CAR. Yes, the ARMORED CAR *is capable* of movement, but as a "target," it is (almost always) sitting, not moving. You wait for them to open the back, or stop at a diner, or something, and then you jump them (the guards, that is). "Moving target" had me lost. It's a defensible clue, but having -ED CAR and no idea was maddening. Seeing Drive last night probably interfered with my reasoning. I kept thinking BOOSTED CAR? Also, most heist films I know don't target cars, armored or otherwise; they target jewelers or payroll offices or horse tracks. Definitely a case of knowing too much here. Ironically, ruinous.
So the NE corner was almost impossible to get into. Wanted SALT Accords before OSLO Accords (23A: ___ Accords (1993 and 1995 pacts)). I did want PAGES (9A: They're connected to the spine) and GINSU (11D: "Simply sharp" brand), but didn't trust them. Anyway, ERICA Jong to the rescue. Thanks, ERICA (16A: Writer Jong). She was a certainty, and gave me an anchor answer to build on in that corner. I had to hack my way through the middle of the grid (no idea about TEAS (33A: They might be blended), and ADE and SPA had tough clues), but PART AND PARCEL went in pretty easily, and then the rest of the puzzle just blew by. Got both PROS AND CONS and CUT AND RUN without even looking at the clues. Once you know it's "___ & ___," you have a considerable advantage (unless, of course, you can't remember RACK AND RUIN, ugh).
I liked the theme concept, even if it was a little fussy and a little forced. The fill, I did not like so much. Too much EBOOK ECOLI IBEAM ATTN STAT IMO ACER SOBE SEPTA short stuff. I'm pretty sure a nonzero number of people are going to wipe out on that SOBE / SEPTA cross. SOBE is not exactly universally known, and I think the NYTXW overestimates the extent to which Philly's public transport system is familiar to non-northeasterners (stands for Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, in case you're wondering). Not putting some kind of South Asian reference in the clue for ATTA is a bit like not putting in a sports reference for SEMIFINAL, i.e. cruel ("Atta is a type of wheat flour, originated from the Indian subcontinent, used to make local flatbreads") (wikipedia). Either they spiced up the difficulty of the clues today because the themer were (generally) so easy to get, or I just ran into my own personal hells a few times. At any rate, top half hard, bottom half easy, overall medium, have a nice day.
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| [Funny how a simple scarf can make a glowering cat, like Jill here, look like a fading movie star (thanks, Louise)] |
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| [Here we have Mr. Darcy, who comes on gruff but turns out to be just right for you (thanks, Richard)] |
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| [It's Sam the Pandemic Rescue Dog (just "Sam" is fine)—his owners say that he's the one who rescued them (thanks, Scott)] |
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| [I can't stop laughing at this ... poor Bailey looks like an animatronic cat that's been turned off ... like "maybe if I just freeze and stare into space they'll go away and I can tear this thing off my head" (thanks, Colleen)] |
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| [Another beautiful baby (Flora) gazing from behind the tree (thanks, Beth)] |
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| [Nancy writes: "This is our cat Kohaku on our granddaughter’s shoulder with sibling dogs Teri and Zach. Kohaku (16) and Zach (15) both died this year — Teri is still plugging along. All three pets were buddies" (thanks, Nancy)] |
***Please, commenters, stop saying “take a screenshot” as this is useless. I need to see the completed grid AND and all the clues, all laid out on one page. I could take a screenshot, but I would see only some of the clues. (Bizarrely, the website does let you print out a completed grid … but just the grid. No clues.) Anyway, Black Ink software is superior for my specific needs the vast majority of the time. You do you. Thanks.
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139 comments:
On the NYT app, which I use almost exclusively, the themers are just all in caps, no underlining. I managed to finish the puzzle but was keen to read your blog this morning, still having NO IDEA what those themers meant. Inexcusable, NYT.
Either my eyesight is deteriorating more rapidly than I thought, or the online version didn’t include the underlines. Or at least mine didn’t. Made for a confusing solve!
My theme clues did not have letters underlined, using the NYT app, making the theme a bit more difficult. Got it done though…
Am I the only one who solved this easily, while never getting the trick of the theme answers? I must be missing the part about underlined letters. I don’t see any of those in the iOS app. Do those show on some other interface or in the actual paper? A revealer clue might have helped. Otherwise, if I’m just supposed to know to look for the letters of “acre” myself and then just intuit that that has a related word starting with P, it seems like a lot of fuss for very little payoff. I mean, I finished it almost 4 minutes faster than my Thursday average, but that still makes it a meh experience for me.
On the Easy side for a Thursday. I solved without reading the themer clues and that actually made it easier because I didn't have to figure out what was up with the clues; I just filled in common _____ and _____ expressions.
Overwrite:
Joke before JEST at 1A
nut before PEA at 9D (thinking banana split)
@Rex dea before ATF at 24A and RoCK AND Roll before RACK AND RUIN at 26A
I just watched Michigan beat Alabama in the SEMIFINAL round of the College Football Playoffs, so 3D was no problem for me.
My app had no underlined letters. So I was solving into a void.
No underlined letters in NYT app
Finished it quickly, because I could see the _____AND____trick right away, and the crosses were fairly easy.
But I still have no idea how the theme answers relate to the clues. That's normal for a Thursday puzzle. Now I'll read the explanation.
A nit to pick about 37A: "odds" relates unfavorable outcomes to favorable outcomes. When two dice are thrown, there is 1 way to get snake eyes, and 35 ways to get something else. So the odds of snake eyes should be 35:1.
RACK AND RUIN was the first themer to drop for me, and then the rest were easy. DEA before ATF, and the last thing to go in was OR IS IT (I had Oh IS IT as well and while I realized there was no singing family called ThAPP it took me a long time to check all the other crosses before coming back and realizing it should be TRAPP (and I always think of them as the von TRAPPs; just TRAPP threw me). This played pretty easy for me.
I also solved this without the underlining. Suggestion for solving your printing issue: take a screenshot of the finished puzzle and paste it into a blank document.
Underlines showed on my Samsung in the NYT app. I've never heard RACKANDRUIN, and maybe ATTA a a flour exists in the dark recesses of my mind, but that A felt like a guess even though RACK seemed like the only reasonable first word there. Otherwise I thought it was fairly easy.
You guys all beat me to it about the App. It’s like the NYT doesn’t even to test that their puzzle works in the app. I did it on a plane, so there was no way to check the online version for what the theme clues should look like.
No underlines for me. Total slogfest. A joke of a puzzle. Sad day for the NYT, but the writing has been on the wall for months now. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Like @Conrad and others this morning, I didn’t see any underlines in the app but plowed on anyway, plugging in familiar “and” phrases and hoping that Rex could explain the theme — which he did, with his inimitable aplomb. Ignoring the theme, I found this easy-ish for a Thursday.
Wiktionary says that “wrack and ruin” is the correct phrase. When I saw the answer today, though, it made me think of Prospero’s “Our revels now have ended” speech in The Tempest, where he says that everything we build will someday “dissolve . . . and leave not a rack behind.” But the internet tells me that the rack in question was a wisp of smoke, and Prospero is making a pun on the shipwreck, or wrack.
Anyway, that missing W gave me food for thought.
Solved as a themeless - yet again the NYT App fails the user. Heads need to roll - and please stop using EBOOK.
Robin Trower
Wrack and wreck (as in shipwreck) both derive from the same Middle English word, "wrak"; "rack," not so much. So yeah. "Rack" is deemed acceptable, which is fine if you don't actually give a rap (not a wrap) about where words come from and the whole archaeology wrapped (not rapped) up in those now-mysterious spellings, but I LOVE that stuff and refuse to let it fade without a struggle. It's not about prescriptivism, it's more about not wanting to see some lovely old piece of architecture torn down to build a strip mall.
Ask me sometime what "fast and loose" actually refers to....
Re armored car clue: surely you have seen Heat, one of the very best, which features a heist from an armored car in motion.
I think the idea is that the ARMORED CAR is normally transporting, i.e. moving, something valuable from point A to point B when it's targeted, even if it's stationary when the actual robbery occurs. (Hey, that's Hamilton Burger, eternal courtroom loser to Perry Mason, in the "Armored Car Robbery" film clip!)
Didn't really care for the puzzle's gimmick. SACRAMENTO KINGS already has the answer word CONS in it (SA_RAMENT_ KI_G_), making "clue" word SCAMS superfluous — bit of a goof there.
Omega
A fairly clever theme, but not one that was particularly fun to solve. Too hard to look at the underlined letters to see what they spelt, so I waited on a few crosses, and used those plus the first-word clue to get to the answer.
SEPTA/SOBE cross was a bit of a guess. SEPTA sounded right, but had it been SAPTA/SOBA I would not have been surprised. Actually, if I had thought about it more I would have gone with SAPTA over SEPTA, reasoning that SEPTA can be clued anatomically.
Ahhhhh... Carol Brady as in the Brady Bunch. It suddenly seems so much less random ("here's a female name so you should assume 'Mom'").
I got the idea of what the puzzle clues were going for but there was so much pattern in the answers (x AND y), and they were so short, that my oh-so-limited brain juice seemed better spent figuring out the surrounding fill than deducing the answers directly. There have been Thursdays where you *really* needed to engage with the theme's conceit to have any chance of completing the puzzle, and I have to say I prefer those much more than themes you can just skim over lightly.
Completely agree. Easier than typical Thursday yet had no idea of the theme because wasn't apparent on ios app.
Had almost the exact same experience as Rex with SEMIFINAL - didn’t recognize it as a word until the last letter went in.
Another iOS user who didn’t have underlined letters. It is very frustrating that the NYT cares so little about the compatibility of their puzzles with their own app!
I get that it's a thing, but RACKANDRUIN is brand new to me. Totally gettable from the crosses, but still. Combined with wanting hit in CUTANDRUN and this puzzle ended up being more of a head scratcher.
At least I did it on the website, so I got the underlined letters in the theme clues.
Another vote for an easy solve in the app with no idea what the second part of each theme clue meant. Boooooooo.
Will Shortz, can I have the 10 minutes back that I spent staring at the completed puzzle on my phone trying to figure out the theme only to give up and read Rex’s blog and then get very angry? Thanks.
Seriously, I’m trying to imagine that collective hours of wasted time because someone at the NYT puzzle department didn’t bother to proofread the puzzle in the app (again). Grrr.
Same issue as everybody else with the lack of underlining and Zero point Zero clue on the theme…
The ARMORED CAR clue made me think of The Town, a heist film in which (I think) the targets are moving. Come to think of it, The Italian Job (or at least the remake, haven’t seen the original) definitely had moving armored cars
(No tech problems by the time I came to the app on my Mac a bit before sunrise.)
This theme had me in awe. After getting the first theme answer, I thought, “That is amazing! How did they come up with an everyday ___AND___ phrase in which the entire clue works for the word before the AND, and, embedded in that clue, is a clue for the word after the AND?”
I thought that they must know coding and that somehow a computer spit out these theme answers. Surely, they couldn’t have figured them out the old-fashioned way, by coming up with ___AND___ phrases and, without any aid whatsoever, trying to find embedded words that worked.
Who does that anymore? But that is exactly what they did, according to their notes! What work! And what brilliant finds!
These theme answers had my jaw agog throughout the fill-in AND I was having incredible fun coming up with the remaining theme answers with as few crosses as possible after getting the first.
Well, what more can you ask for than a state of awe and a spate of fun in a puzzle? Chase and Christina, thank you for all you put into this and for a marvelous solve. I tip my HAT and enthusiastically PAT you on the back for this one. I. Loved. It. Brava and bravo!
Sigh. App ruins a puzzle *again*. There is a massive games team and not even one of them bothers to check the puzzle works? Pathetic.
From the Wordplays blog: “Our publishing system does not allow underlining, so I will indicate which letters in each clue are highlighted.”
0.0
Soooooo…why publish something you know in advance won’t work??? Slash why is that your (arbitrary) “publishing system”???
Philadelphian here, so SEPTA was easy but..
I thought we had the first rebus of the year because I was trying to fit “penultimate” as well. My 4th(out of 5 children or penultimate) child has a birthday on the penultimate day of the year(12/30) so I’m currently obsessed with the word.
I did not see any underlines,as well, so I honestly thought “MOMANDPOP” was referring to Carol Brady being a single Mom in the beginning of the show?
What’s especially frustrating is that an issue like this (which, again, they knew about in advance, see the Wordplays blog) is that they didn’t bother to use the little info/i button in the app to tell users what on earth was going on with those clues!
Actually there's quite the YouTube video of an armored car in south Africa being targeted on the run. Driver was a stud. As for no underlined clues in the app - that sucked.
It’s still not rendering on my iOS NYT app. For the second time in the last couple of months, I find myself asking why no one even tests these? I do not understand how they could publish one of the biggest moneymakers for the newspaper without testing it. When I designed websites way way back in the early aughts, I tested everything on all major platforms before hitting publish. Is that no longer protocol?
Didn't know the drink brand, and never been to Philly, so went down in flames. Slightly un-fun puzzle, good Rex writeup and user comments, thanks guys.
Had the same issue as well. As someone who (as an Australian) already struggles with such Americentric clues and answers, not having the theme apparent was maddening!
I took that to mean their article publishing program allow for underlining, not the crossword program.
Ditto above so solved the plain blank and blank concept. Never heard of RACK AND RUIN. Thought BUCk was a fit for MOOSE, especially with crosses like NORI and ATTA. No music for me today.
The app issues remind me of the time when the app was showing clues that were key signatures as just plain black boxes and didn’t bother to use the little information “i” to tell us to check the Wordplay blog or the printed version. Ticks me off! Easy solve either way, but I’d have loved to have known the theme while doing it…
The theme values looked as Rex illustrates on Across Lite — not very transparent. Still, I prefer that to the NYT app any day.
I see SOBE all over the place. Never had it myself but it seems very popular and common around here. And I knew SEPTA, having lived in Philadelphia for awhile many decades ago.
Couldn’t see the underlines on the app on the iPad, so wanted to come over and see the story, but some of the flying was pleasingly economical. Drink additive, Place with scrubs, and Balance provider all felt very original!
Same here. Solved it relatively quickly as it was clear there was missing info.
I had the underlines on my Samsung tablet so no issues, score one for Android users and nil for the Apple Kool-aid drinkers...
I can’t see well today so excuse any typos. I did not have the underlined letters! That was annoying. Had no idea what the theme was. Anyhoo,now I want to get a dog and name it Mr Darcy. Adorable.
I always print the Thursday puzzle the night before and solve in the morning. The clues in the printed ones have mIxeD cAse so you can pick out the hurricane from the rest of the clue. I don’t understand why the app rendered them all uppercase, when the other clues are rendered normally.
Going to pile on the NYT app. you can get colored fucking confetti flying around into individual little black squares but can’t execute one of the 3 basic text formatting options? I mean what an absolute joke. But hey Will Shortz (and whole games dept really) did you even think about just using one the other 2 basic formatting options. Bold or Italics for those letters? We see those all the time, including all those dumb, bracketed italicized clues we get ad nauseum. Instead just said fuck it, we’ll make it a themeless for the largest solving segment of our customer base.
Yea, I’m salty.
I did like the puzzle, so feel bad for the constructors.
Don’t understand Rex on the armored car thing since they are so ubiquitous in “heist” films. Many times moving, sometimes not. Dont know if I have enough digits to count the number of times in films where a swarm of black SUV/Cargo vans or whatever surround an armored car and take it out.
The bottom for me was hardest because of CUTANDRUN, which w/o the theme, had to be “hit”, then “eat”, which made DOCKS and COUNT difficult to get. COUNT was a tricky clue in its own right.
All said, still about 5min under average.
FH
Take a screen shot.
Print the screen shot.
Same here - had no idea what the theme was
online (web) version letters were bolded.
No underlines in my app either, so the themers made no sense except as familiar phrases (including RACKANDRUIN, which I’ve heard a lot - the world is going to RACKANDRUIN, for example, perhaps a phrase my grandmother used and that’s why I know it).
I agree with Rex on most points, although strangely, I had no troubled coming up with ARMOREDCAR. So much of the puzzle was pretty easy, but there were many half-remembered proper names, possibly the fact that I’m under the brain-cloud of a horrid head cold. SEMIFINAL was impossible to come up with given the clue, even with several crosses in place. The NE was dreadful, had AMtoo for a long time, no idea on the Philly transport system, lucky for good old ERICA but she couldn’t quite save me up there.
Anyway, could we have a rebus soon? I like a rebus on a Thursday.
If I had ever watched the Brady Bunch I could have halved my time today. Thought it was a fine, fun puzzle.
Happy to see good old SEPTA get a mention! Armored cars moving is pretty normal. Weird nit to pick.
Hey All !
Nice Fit And Finish. Good puz to share with Friends And Family.
My F contributions. 😁
Again, nice puz, but doesn't seem ThursPuz worthy, same as last Thursday. Not saying this was a bad puz, it wasn't, it was nicely made, and fun to solve. Just seems like it should have run on a Wednesday.
Anyway, that bit of crying aside, the Themers we're just tricky enough (for me) to not auto-fill. CUT AND RUN is second in my ___AND RUN lexicon. First is HIT, of course. RACK AND RUIN hasn't been heard by me for a minute. So nicely done.
ORISIT always looks like a name. Maybe Orson Wells' sibling? Har.
Gotta (E)BOOK.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Any time I see a fairly large number of comments this early I think "app problem" and today I was not disappointed. The printout just put part of the answer in capital letters, which worked fine once you saw the trick, which I did at CUTANDRUN. That was fairly early as I solved this one bottoms-up.
Guessed at SOBE X SEPTA and guessed right, so I could have hummed my own happy music, but I wasn't sure until I looked at the blog. Otherwise no real issues. I have heard RACKANDRUIN without thinking much about the spelling issue but agree with those who want WRACK.
ASAP and STAT in the same puzzle? What's the hurry?
I liked your Thursday a lot, CD and CI. Clever Design, Completely Ingenious. Thanks for all the fun.
Edit, meant to add caps. Which is my guess at what they probably meant to do, but themers ended up all caps.
I’m surprised Rex didn’t flag the ‘von Trapp’ answer as being an example of the NYT being ethnocentric. I’ve never heard of them being referred to as Trapp, and there’s nothing in the clue suggesting a partial answer.
The NYT app had underlines for me, but they were very faint and it took me a couple looks to notice them and convince myself they were there.
Regarding the underscoring, I'd be mad too. There are so many of these "trick" puzzles that the software can't handle, I wonder if they just say, "Meh. Some people are going to be angry today but it isn't worth the cost of fixing it to take care of such issues." I always solve on paper, so I didn't know anything about it til I came here.
With those handy underscores staring at me, the theme jumped out almost immediately and I mostly zoomed through. Figured out SEMIFINAL when I saw that penultimate didn't fit. Did pause for a bit at the train system and drink cross because I had SOBo for the drink. Then figured it was SouthEast PA were talking about so was able to move on.
Thought Rex was going to go on about it being too easy (cuz if *I* thought it was easy...) for a Thursday, so I was surprised to read his take, which had almost nothing to do with the underlining business.
Sure felt good today for me, though. Tomorrow I'll revert to my usual struggles.
Curiously, on my iPad the clues were in all CAPS, but on iPhone the clues were in mIXedCase. What a failure. Apparently they don’t pay their constructors OR their dev team much.
I too didn't see the underlining on the NYT app, so I solved without understanding the theme; however, after reading @rex, I looked again and there they were, but VERY faint. So annoying!
I did the puzzle last night on the app and the underlines were very definitely there.
Also, does screenshot to get a picture of the completed puzzle on either app or desktop browser not work? Both work fine for me.
I solve on paper so the underlined were there. Still didn’t grok the theme until I read Rex’s explanation.
Hmmm. At 9:20am the NYT app theme words were capital and in brackets: (C)ar(O)(L) br(A)dy. So ... fun and very clever.
Yep, got wrecked on the SOBE / SEPTA cross. Had SOBi / SiPTA and that looked fine to me, so when I got the “keep trying” I didn’t have the patience to check every square in the grid. Rough cross there and tough to go down on a single letter
Totally the same issue - solved at 9:30 and had no idea what was going on but finished anyway
At some point, they updated the theme clues from underlines to parentheses. Depends on if you opened the puzzle in the app before or after they changed it. I had the all-caps unsolvable version, but my friend who didn’t open it until this morning saw (C)ar(O)(L) br(A)dy.
If I'd been readily able to spot which letters were underlined, I would have had a much easier time with the puzzle. I'm having enough trouble these days, with my worsening eyesight, reading the numbers of the clues -- especially the ones in the grid. But this was almost impossible to make out.
Then, if I'd known who CAROL BRADY is/was, I also would have had an easier time too. But as that entry started to fill in with an MO, I thought: If she's a member of The Brady Bunch, which had a lot of children I think (never watched it), then she might be a MOM.
I squint harder. Oh, I see -- it's COLA that's underlined. MOM AND POP. Yes! Very cute!
So now that I knew what the trick was, I got them all quite easily. Except for PROS AND CONS. Yes it filled in ASAP, but what did it mean? I squinted and squinted and all I could make out for the underlined letters was SAMS.
Someone will tell me why SAMS = CONS, yes?
My kind of cryptic-like puzzle. Some of the surrounding fill was a little ragged, but basically I found this a lot of fun.
I wanted eat and run. I don't know if I've ever used the phrase cut and run.
At 10am mine still shows just all caps. Luckily I actually had an okay time with the rest of the grid so I finished fine but had no clue what the themers were about
@Mark 6:41 a.m. - You're right about the NYT not testing the online version against the print version for things like the underlines. I have a related gripe: they don't put the puzzle through the copydesk, which would expose the increasing number of linguistic and factual errors in the clues and answers. I rarely understand the Thursday gimmicks, but this week was able to solve the puzzle nevertheless.
The “cons” in Sacramento Kings really threw me off. Solving on the iOS app I didn’t have the underlines, and that was the first themer I got, so I was looking for the last halves of the other answers to also be hidden within the clues.
How do I send in my pet picture? I have Mr.Darcy’s twin!!
You don’t. Please. I’m overwhelmed. Next year… ~RP
Very easy. Then again, some possible tricky spots like SOBE and SEPTA were right in my wheelhouse.
I don't use the app, but solve on the NYT website. There, the clues are rendered with parentheses, as:
(C)ar(O)(L) br(A)dy
I see now in Deb Amlen's blog that they updated the clues before I started the puzzle.
You would think someone on the editorial staff would test this (at least give it a look) on all available platforms before publishing, though. They are supposed to be professional editors. They surely have other Thursday puzzles ready to go that could have been swapped in...
Re: the "von Trapp" issue - Maria wrote the book entitled "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" in 1949, which was the basis for the various media adaptations that followed (film, stage musical, film musical).
More on TRAPP - every recording they released (78s and LPs) either referred to them as The Trapp Family Choir or The Trapp Family Singers. Not a 'von' anywhere to be found.
@Nancy 9:59 - you missed an underlined 'C' - SCAMS = CONS.
Same story here. No underlines, but easy solve. Spent 20 minutes staring at finished grid. Didn't get it. Now I do. I'm pretty surprised at the NYT staff.
Funny to see such different "childish retorts" as uttered by very dissimilar children: AMNOT and NORI.
I recently read an EBOOK about ECOLI. IBEAM ORISIT and smile whenever I think about it.
Yep
I really liked this Thursday offering and apparently solved late enough to have the technical difficulties fixed on the NYT app. My TWO glitches: I read the clue for 51A as SCRAMS rather SCAMS (@Nancy) but still reluctantly filled in CONS, thinking I missed something. Hand up for initially having SOBa instead of SOBE…because even though I’m familiar with the bottled drink, I forget how to spell it. Yeah, even though I’m reasonably familiar with the major transit systems in the U.S. (CTA, BART, MARTA) SEPTA was unknown to me (hi, @kishef on anatomy). Still fun and clever!
And today I learned the reason why @Rex doesn’t use the NYT app! And I even get it!
By the time I fire up the iPad in Idaho, the format issues were resolved by the bracket gimmick anonymous notes above. So a really cool puzzle that misled me in all the ways Rex cites: dea/ATF, etc. Plus as a recovering fan of Coach Tark, I held onto rebs doing the running for way too long before non-sports-lover spouse assured me that EBOOK TOPIC(s) had to be those not BYU guys for 5A & the fat lady burst into song. CUT AND RUN a was first themer to appear and AND became a very helpful crutch for the others.
Kinda like the pet pix on other holidays idea, but maybe have a random selection & give it a rest¿
Thanks to Chase AND Christina for their delightful grid.
I agree with @CONRAD that the solve was probably easier without the underlining! No time wasted figuring out a gimmick - the phrases pretty much filled themselves out being so common.
Still, with the revenue generated from the iOS app you’d think they’d get it right. (And I fully agree with the other commentator who noted that if you can get flying colored confetti you should be able to manage a simple underlining!)
Rex,
The best heist film of the last thirty years--Heat--features the takedown of a moving armored car. And since you're forever citing lamps of noir, how about Criss Cross? That truck moving enough for you? Sheesh.
Oh my. REALLY good theme but the execution appears to have been a total cluster flock. My printout from the NYT website has the clues with capital letters instead of underlines, but the app on my iPad has the letters in caps inside parentheses. Go figure. It must’ve been very difficult if you had neither caps or underlines. None of the themers was difficult to parse otherwise, though, AND the theme was helpful in the overall solve. If you can get past the tech TOPIC of tech glitches, a better than average Thursday IMO.
ON TOE again? What are the chances?
I'm all in with @Lewis today and my experience is @Nancy's MO was like mine.
First: The capitalized themes had little underlines on my downloaded puzzle. Since I'm a neat person, I wrote each of the underlined words next to the clue.
So....17A was COLA. Hmmmm. Go to the next one. MOOSE ANTLERS has a little MAR. Ok...if you say so. Jumped to SCAMS for the SACRAMENTO KINGS and thought "Wait A Minute!"... I hope Mike Bibbi or Vlade Divac aren't doing todays puzzle! Hah.
Anyway, this is how I solved it. I went back up to COLA and MO suddenly became MOM AND POP. I actually squealed with delight. I take a moment to look at this and thought very loudly that this was really clever. I filled in the downs without any problems except with SEMIFINAL. I had the same issue as @Rex did with wanting *penultimate*....The across clues took care of that. Thank you.
The only little problem I had was with the TOP ROUND STEAK. Without a second thought, I put in EAT AND RUN. DOCKS finally gave me the C and so CUT was born! Yeah...it's CUT AND RUN. And...I like you!
I feel bad for the solvers who weren't able to see the underlines words. I thinkif you had, you would've appreciated this puzzle a lot more.
PS. No cheats today....No angst, agita nor dyspepsia.....just a fun fandango tango.
Hey Rex - I enjoyed today’s puzzle. For me, solid clueing. A grammatical suggestion for you, one doesn’t “print out” a puzzle or anything else, you simply print it. What you hold in you hand may be a printout, one word-a noun, but print out is not really a verb.
Just saying.
We almost met a number of years ago when I was staying at Martha’s Airbnb in Binghamton and we were at the market in the north side of Binghamton when you were there. She didn’t tell me until we left, or I would have said hello. Really enjoy this blog!
The funny thing is, they *knew* it didn't work for the first few hours and left a nice note where everyone could find it, after they finished solving, in the Wordplay blog:
*Administrivial Alert (with clue spoilers!): The underlined letters are not visible if you are solving in the app.
*If you would like to see the clues with their underlined letters, they are:
*17A. CAROL BRADY, with C, O, L and A underlined
*26A. MOOSE ANTLERS, with M, A and R underlined
*40A. ACTING ROLE, with A, C, R and E underlined
*51A. SACRAMENTO KINGS, with S, C, A, M and S underlined
*64A. TOP ROUND STEAK, with T, R, O and T underlined.
Reflecting the thoughts of ANON @7:59, It seems like they would have a way to test that everything's AOK in the app before publishing.
Anyway, I solved on the website and it was pretty straightforward. Fell into most of the same TRAPPs Rex mentioned. Too bad the app left so the experience of so many solvers in wRACK AND RUIN. Might have been fun to talk about the puzzle rather than its administration.
@DRBB found this youtube video exploring
Fast and Loose.
That was fun. JEST didn't seem right, but otherwise no troubles. Once I figured out the first theme I was able to write in all the others, but I goofed and said EAT AND RUN. Never heard the phrase RACK AND RUIN.
It's von Trapp, c'mon. The von is part of it. Boy was I glad RABAT filled in via crosses. I know only one thing about Morocco... it's in north Africa. That's it. Their PR department is failing them in my demographic.
ATTA ATTN STAT ASAP ANT ATM
We have a Trader Joe's down the block and the parking lot and traffic jams is a daily nightmare. For some reason their ARMORED CAR seems to appear 100% of the time I am trying to get home blocking one of the two lanes and holy moly does that slow everything to a snail's pace and give me the opportunity to become super judgy about Millennials. I never see anybody going in there except 30 year olds (and most of them looked way cuter 10 years ago).
@KBF (yd)
Aw, thanks! I really do love searching for the uniclues every morning. It's a chance to get my brain online and create something from nothing. I am delighted you find them amusing.
Uniclues:
1 Aunt and uncle in Dr. Seuss.
2 Soccer match ending nil-nil.
3 Having a stroke in the barnyard at lunch.
4 Delay dendrochronology data.
5 What every parent should receive on arrival at Disneyland.
6 Writer makes automobile chase scene inevitable.
1 MOM AND POP AM NOT
2 TIE ... OR IS IT? (~)
3 NOON LAMB PAT (~)
4 STALL STEM STAT
5 TRAM STRESSBALL
6 ADDS ARMORED CAR (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: My kindergartener drew something just like that with her 64 pack of crayons. SASS CUBISTS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Forgot my name - JBDonovan
Must've woken up on the opposite side of the bed as everyone else here: not a big fan of the theme (by the time I solved it, the letters were in parentheses): yes, the idea is somewhat interesting, but I want a bit more in my Thursdays. Thought the clue for SEMIFINAL was perfectly fair, but the whole SOBA/USD/SEPTA section took much too long to unwind. Knew OSLO but wasn't sure about ERICA, which meant the NE was a bit thornier than it should've been. Never knew from ATTA other than "____ boy!" and probably am not going to think about it again until it turns up next time. Still, a whole lot better than I could do, so I'm going to limit my griping...
Hope everyone's having a good new year so far!
Knowing Rex's tastes, he's probably seen the great moving-ARMORED CAR heist fim, Robert Siodmak's "Criss-Cross", with Burt Lancaster and the lovely pre-Munster Yvonne DeCarlo. If not, he should, and soon.
Regarding 37-across: although the probability of snake eyes is 1/36, the odds against it is 35:1. The author is confusing odds with probability.
Let me start off on a good note - love the pet parade!
Now the bad - No Underlines for me either. I'm tempted to cancel my digital subscription, but then who am I spiting?? God, I miss getting the print paper!
Got a laugh when I saw what was going on with Carol Brady and MOMANDPOP, so a successful puzzle IMO. Before seeing the theme I struggled with this one.
I'm with Rex on WRACK vs RACK, but it made me wonder if my pet peeve - which is when people write “Tow the Line,” was also acceptable. I'm here to say it is not. The correct meaning and spelling is Always “Toe the line.”
The NE corner was the biggest challenge here too. RACKAND ? Load?? No idea on GINSU. But once I got PAGES it was solvable.
SEPTA? What a choice for an acronym. The plural of septum? Ohhhhkaay.
Let’s give some love to DESERTRAT - Yay! (I don’t think of the rodent here…) And the clue for SPA.
SEMIFINAL was tough for this non-sports oriented solver.
SCAMS
Also wanted Penultimat(e) and DEA, which slowed me down a lot in that corner, along with JEST, which I don’t think is the same thing as a Gag, given that a gag is almost always used to refer to a visual, nonverbal comedic bit and a jest is almost always a verbal comedic bit. Once MOM AND POP fell into place (with considerable help from OR IS IT and KANT, and yes, SEPTA, even though I was born and raised in and am a current inhabitant of California) the rest of the theme answers wrote themselves though, and the rest of the fill was pretty easy, though with no great standouts.
BTW like Anonymous, this is what is on the NYT website
(C)ar(O)(L) br(A)dy
I was going to say "take a screenshot," but then I saw the other comments to that effect as well as your frustrated addendum, so here's my modified suggestion:
1) Print out the blank puzzle
2) Complete the puzzle electronically
3) Print the completed grid
Then you'll have a printout of the completed grid as well as all the clues, which seems to satisfy all your requirements.
NYT changed the clues -- after reading Rex's post, perhaps? What I had in Across Lite at 5:15 a.m. was coding lingo [which I;m not allowed to replicate here] for what now shows as (A)(C). I hate the NYT attempts to bully me into using their app, and I'm glad that they obviously backed down this time after being called on it.
It’s not SEPTA but BART who expresses the frustration of all of us iOS solvers left behind on this too-simple-to-fail special effect (underlining!):
“Eat me, Shortz!”
And yeah, i made basically the same Simpson joke a week ago, but AY CARAMBA!
NYTXW can animate Evel Kneivel jumps but can’t underline characters. On which they base the theme!
Glad to know I'm not the only one who stopped at "rack and ruin" and thought, that isn't right...its "WRACK and ruin." Seems I've seen the wrack version many times and never "rack," but a little investigation indicates that the "rack" version has been accepted for at least a couple of centuries, although "wrack" was the original word. Apparently, i'm even more behind the times than I thought.
My fellow Anonymouses are right re: 37A.
Odds against snake eyes are 35:1.
Odds (and probabilities, and percentages) are hard enough to understand as it is . . . nyt shouldn't make a mistake like this!
Across Lite showed the HTML codes for the underlining; no bold or brackets. Fortunately I'm very familiar with HTML so when I read the clue I just thought "Wow that's cruel; it is going to be very confusing for 98% of the solvers!" It was only much later I realized it was a tech issue. Once again AL has its flaws, but evidently so do many of the others.
Finished with SOBA crossing SAPTA and no Happy Pencil. Since I have heard of the pop but don't drink it (and SOBA is a real thing!), and I have never been to Philly, that's a real Natick. E was my second guess, though.
[Spelling Bee: Wed 0; a couple of tricky SB specials in there.]
[Connections: Wed the purple category was ridiculous. I have never heard of any of them!]
Add me to the easy but with no underlined letters on my iPad app contingent. The NYT Wordplay Column has instructions for fixing your grid.
I also gave the side eye to SEMIFINAL as the answer to 3D "Next-to-last" because it is one of two events before the FINAL. So the SEMIFINALS would be the next-to-last level in a tournament.
Like others, I had to guess a couple of times before SOBE SEPTA produce the "Congratulations!" happy music. Yeah, that's a real head scratcher why anyone would name their transportation system after the plural of an anatomical body part. Our most obvious SEPTUM is literally right there in front of our face. Think nose piercing.
For those keeping score, 27D ATTA has appeared 130 time during the Shortz era. Through 2019 it was almost always clued as some version of "ATTA girl/boy!" with "U.N.'s Kofi ___ Annan" making six appearances. Since 2020 it's mostly been some form of "Flour in Indian cuisine". I agree with OFL that leaving off some regional reference to the clue "Whole-grain wheat flour" is dirty pool.
The theme left me puzzling a tad longer than it should have. The first themer, MOM AND POP, well I knew who Carol Brady was but my clues were using caps, not underlines, and I only noticed the capital O and A and was wondering what OA POP I was ignorant of. RACK AND RUIN gave me a hint to the theme but then PART AND PARCEL re-confused me because ACRE letters are in PARCEL, albeit not in order.
When it was all over, I went back and looked more carefully at the theme clues and all was made clear.
My difficult area was the west central - AOK, TRAPP, OR IS IT and KANT all needed the cross of STRESS BALL before I was able to complete that part, and I didn't even have Rex's SEMIFINAL problem - that fell in early on.
Nice Thursday puzzle, thanks Chase and Christina!
I think it's referencing the app. Otherwise they wouldn't have inserted parentheses in the app. A web blog certainly allows underlining with simple HTML tags.
Another way to go: Have a clue such as {Mom and pop?}, with an answer of CAROLBRADY, with the COLA letters circled. Mighta worked better, on all them weirdball puzapps, I reckon. But yep, if the clues were stuff like {©AR(O)(L) BR(A)DY}, you'd think that woulda worked, too.
M&A always does the original print-out newspaper version, to avoid such CON(F)(U)(S)ION(S).*
staff weeject pick: USD. Didn't know that the University of San Diego did currency exchanges, tho.
Pretty easy ThursPuz solvequest, with a few SOBE/SEPTA exceptions. Liked puztheme -- different. Think I made a runtpuz once upon a time that did somethin similar -- but maybe it was X in Y stuff. I dunno. I tend to lose track, after the first thousand or so of em.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Dittrich dude and Ms. Iverson darlin. Always happy to be ganged up on … and that's semi-final!
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s. * = FUSSANDBOTHER. [Well, hey -- close, anyway!]
**gruntz**
Because I eschew the app, solving on a printout from the Replica Edition, I saw the underlines right away. I started in the SE, as I often do. STALL, EAGLE, KNOT and STEM went in first. Once I had PROS AND CONS, I saw BALL and thought "Oh - PRO BALL!", but that theme detour didn't last. In the end, this was one of my fastest Thursdays ever. And I didn't even dislike the theme, as I often do on this day of the week.
To add to the list of armored car heists: the great early scene from Michael Mann’s Heat. Christopher Nolan paid tribute to it in The Dark Knight. In both cases the truck was in fact moving (until it very dramatically wasn’t).
One of my fastest Thursdays ever. A satisfying theme.
Well, aren’t you just Mr. Smarty Pants!
Same! i was like “am I missing something?!” And I was
Saw that someone else noticed the incorrect odds against "snake eyes." The PROBABILITY is one in 36, so the odds are 35 to 1. (Unfortunately, at the table, the bet pays only 30 to 1...). I solve on paper, but didn't see the underlines at all. Looking now, there they are, but too faint for these eyes. Had no trouble solving all the same, except for the impossible (for me) cross of a brand I've never heard of, and an acronym I couldn't possible come up with. Septa? SOBA ? Not acc SEPTA ble... ( but would have liked the puzzle a lot better if I had seen the underlining. )
Yep, the probability of rolling snake eyes is one in 36, so the odds against are 35 to 1. (but sadly, the house pays only 30 to one). Septa was unaccSEPTAble, crossed with an acronym. Boo! A DNF for me. AND I couldn't see the underlines, although on second examination with a lighted magnifying glass, yes, there were lines. It would have been a lot more fun had I seen them!
Thx Chase & Christina; a fine production! 😊
Downs-o (1 1/2 hrs); almost got it.
Had SLice & foO crossing ASif, TEREco & ReO. Thot TEREco might be a company or some such.
Mostly happy with the effort, except for not finishing strong (altho, I've been making inroads lately on that issue; but not td). TERESA did come to mind, but that would've required tearing out the rest of the section, and I wasn't up to the task. :(
The other letdown was not taking time to fully grok the entire import of the clues. Thx to @Rex for the heads-up to the first parts.
Had a bit of the side-eye at TRAPP w/o the 'von', but @kitshef (11:04 AM) got me seeing straight on that issue.
Get away car before ARMORED CAR (oops!)
Once I got SEM in the NW, SEMI FINAL went right in.
Had EBOOK, tore it out, then eventually it went back in.
Currently re-watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with one of my all-time faves, DAME Maggie Smith. Also, recently re-watched 'David Copperfield', where she teams up with Daniel Radcliffe. Probably time to rewatch her in Downton Abbey, as well. 🎥
Good luck to the Runnin' UTES as they prepare to join the Big 12 later this year.
All-in-all, a pretty good trip td thru downs-only land! :)
___
As an aside from a recent puz re: DAIYA vegan cheese: my local market does carry the shredded option. Got my order yd, and tried out the cheddar flavor on my Finn Crisp rye cracker. Zapped it for 15 secs. It melted perfectly, and made for a yummy, warm snack.
___
Paolo Pasco's New Yorker cryptic was on the tough side, but doable in the end. Love his unique clueing.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
@DrBB 7:22 AM: Well said! I agree completely.
@Beverly C.-Completely agree on "tow the line". My personal "oh no" is when someone puts a person "through the ringer", which has the "n w" connection of "rack vs. wrack".
Yes, I was very surprised to see this kind of factual error in an NYT crossword. I guess neither the constructor nor WILLz is a gambler :)
Two gripes that I'd expect Rex to peeve about, on our behalf:
(1) The clue for SRI ("Title of respect") gives no hint of a non-English entry. Is that even legit?
(2) SEPTA aside, given the problem with crossing SOBE (and with UTES, for the non-NCAA-immersed), isn't it remarkably unhelpful to clue USD as "Currency exchange inits."?
And I must applaud the wonderfully apt "fading movie star" observation!
Totally agree! I teach math and this is the first time I've seen an error like this!
Anonymous 9:16
I actually looked it up
Sometimes our memories are fallible. While the full name was often used here when referring to the family they marketed themselves, right after WW Ii as the “Trapp Family Singers”. They probably thought it was not a good time to emphasize a German name! So the answer is fine .
Southside Johnnie.
While the paper had underlines my aging eyes missed them all. However, I thought the expressions were very easy to get so even though I missed the whole gimmick, I enjoyed it.
All this is a matter of opinion of course but note that while many didn’t even have any underlines, they still enjoyed the puzzle.
They should straighten out their software problems though.
Had the same experience. Solved anyway but was very confused. At least I’m not paying monthly for the [checks notes] oh man, I am being told I AM paying monthly for this app.
This puzzle made me realize that clues show up differently depending on if you use a web browser, the NYT app, or the NYT Games app, which is absurd
So annoying. I solved quickly and then spent the whole day trying to understand the theme before finally giving up and learning... that the NYT app did not include the underlines? WTF?!
Luckily, I solved it after the theme clues were fixed, so I set my first PB of 2024. As a Detroiter, it was nice to see POP instead of SODA for a change.
(I really wanted MOOSE AND SQUIRREL to somehow be the answer.)
Go on, I'll bite...
Absolutely. The error surprised me, but I did enjoy the rest of the puzzle.
well, it’s been a couple of days and they still haven’t fixed the app. get your act together NYT!!
My syndicated app switched the underlined letters to capital letters, but like many of the solvers on the first go around, I had them mostly solved before I figured out what the odd camel case was for. I was stuck for with both ROCK AND ROLL and HIT AND RUN, so backed up to figure out the trick and fix the broken ones.
I used to drink SOBE and remember the embossed lizard on the old glass bottles. They had good flavours. I must have stopped recognizing the bottles when they switched to plastic. I thought it had simply stopped being available.
I wanted to put PI instead of RHO for the "P for Plato." Wouldn't S for Socrates be a fair clue for SIGMA, or must sigma by law be clued as part of a sorority? Ooh, "S for sorority?" If only I knew how to construct crossword puzzles I could use that. (I tried once, and found it very difficult. My great respect to Chase and Christina, and others who can do it).
Syndicated print user here. The plates must have been worn down by the time they printed my paper, as the underlining was barely visible. So got the grid done and saw some obvious reason for the first word before the AND but clueless (literally) for the last word.
DNF. Naticked at one square like probably so many others here. I had SOBa and SaPTA. Not fair. The gimmick was not worth the effort. Other than the blank and blank wordplay the themers had nothing to do with each other and there was no snappy revealer. IMO, just not my cup of tea. And if you disagree, SOBE it.
In the Sun, they didn't print any underlines, so it was just CAROL BRADY, etc. Nonetheless, I managed to complete the puzzle correctly, without having the "McGuffin." So, not my fault.
Living in the home of the UNLV Runnin' REB[el]S, I put them into 5-across. Some lost time, and an inkblot, there. Also had AMtOo before AMNOT in that last-to-fall NE. A goodly amount of misdirection, about par for a Thursday. So, par.
Wordle par.
JAM, OR NOT?
TERESA's MOMANDPOP will PLEA
they're PARTANDPARCEL of NOON TEA,
the PROSANDCONS
to put IT ON:
they JEST KANT find A STALL to PEA.
--- DAME ERICA TRAPP
Syndicat here. No brackets or underlining; just all CAPS. Had to come here to see what the gimmick was. Had to rack my brain to picture that beverage that I have never bought, but have seen in the coolers a billion times, but said to myself: It can't be soba, because that's a Japanese noodle.
Sobe it!
Nothing underlined here, so largely a mystery as tothe last part of the themers. ATTN: ASAP STAT ATTA ATM soe of the fill is less than wonderful.
Wordle par.
The Seattle Times site has this one right: the necessary letters are capitalized, such as "Top ROund sTeak". Works well.
Solved in ink. Local paper had the theme cues in ALL CAPS, which usually suggests anagrams. I got as far as finding COLA but had no idea what kind of cola could be made with the letters ABDRRY, so I just finished the grid and set the paper aside with a note to check this site.
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