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Controvert / THU 2-15-24 / Landlord-pays-broker, in rental lingo / Olympic champion who said he trhrew his gold medal into the Ohio River / Chignon, for one
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Constructor: TEDDY KATZ AND RICH KATZ
Relative difficulty: Medium (5:34, taking it a bit easy)
THEME: DOUBLE OR NOTHING — 5 circled squares can be filled either with a double letter or left blank, and the resulting answer works either way, both across and down (32A: Risky wager ... with a hint to the letters in this puzzle's circled squares).
Theme answers:
- DIMMED or DIM (17A: Powered down, in a way)
- RIPPLE or RILE (19A: Disturb, in a way)
- CUSSED or CUED (22A: Told where to go, say)
- LONG ODDS or LONG OS (55A: Characteristic of video poker, lottos and casinos)
- FEELINGS or FLINGS (59A: Results of some dating app matches)
- DRIPPED or DRIED (3D: Sat on a clothesline, say)
- TOMMY or TOY (6D: ___ gun)
- BLOSSOM or BLOOM (9D: Flower)
- SKIDDED or SKIED (45D: Careened across snow, maybe)
- SEA EELS or SEALS (46D: Sleek ocean swimmers)
In 2010 an anonymous person began a Twitter account for the San Francisco fog, inspired by the fake BP public relations account that appeared after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that year, and named "Karl the Fog" after the misunderstood giant in the 2003 film Big Fish.
Ok, I'm back. Today's puzzle is by Rich and Teddy Katz, a father/son team. Rich has had a few NYT puzzles before, but this is Teddy's debut. Congrats!
I enjoyed this theme overall; it felt impressive to me. I was able to drop the revealer in immediately at 32A, which points to a well-developed idea. All of these words fit perfectly well with their clues with or without the double letter. LONG ODDS/LONG OS is the real standout for me, probably because they're the most different interpretations of the clue. SEA EELS feels like the longest stretch, but it's a valid alternative to loose SEALS.
I enjoyed this theme overall; it felt impressive to me. I was able to drop the revealer in immediately at 32A, which points to a well-developed idea. All of these words fit perfectly well with their clues with or without the double letter. LONG ODDS/LONG OS is the real standout for me, probably because they're the most different interpretations of the clue. SEA EELS feels like the longest stretch, but it's a valid alternative to loose SEALS.
Unfortunately, after the events in Kansas City yesterday, it's even less fun than usual to see guns in the puzzle, either TOMMY or TOY. I'd hope that the people getting the syndicated version in a few weeks won't have the same issue, but sadly there's almost no day you could run a puzzle that someone solving won't have been impacted by recent gun violence.
The theme working in both across and down clues means that the remaining fill is a little strained. Lots and lots and lots and lots of short stuff, and none of it too memorable. I'm impressed that there aren't a ton of proper nouns/trivia (BTS, IAGO, ONO, NYE, ALI, SEUSS... maybe KARL?), and there's nothing that stands out as bad to me. It's all just kinda... there. As a result, the non-themers played slow for me. The price of a Thursday theme, I suppose.
Would it be fun if I pointed out answers that immediately made me think of fictional characters? Well I'm gonna.
SKEETER (49A: Garden party annoyance, colloquially)
DATA (32D: Word with bank or base)
IAGO (26D: Speaker of the line "I follow him to serve my turn upon him")
BLOSSOM (9D: Flower)
Additional Notes:
- APEMEN (28A: So-called "missing links") — The word ape will always make me think of this (my go-to trivia team name is I Love You, Dr. Zaius):
- DE RIEN (2D: Response to "Merci") — I'm by no means fluent in French, but I studied pretty intensively before I last went to Paris. For some reason, this phrase has NEVER stuck with me.
- EGOT (52D: Impressive showbiz quartet) — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony if you don't know. Congratulations to Elton John for completing his EGOT at the Emmys. I hope that Bruce Springsteen's cameo on this week's Curb Your Enthusiasm is enough to get him his next year (I'm kidding. Mostly).
- TAKE ME (10D: "I want to go with you!") — I do want to compliment this clue for being so naturally in the language that I dropped the answer in instantly. But I'm really highlighting it because I know Rex had someone recently complain that no one knew the band A-ha, and their Take On Me video is an all time classic and I don't need more excuse than this answer to post it here (also, doing a Bond theme makes you instantly valid as a crossword answer).
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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117 comments:
I can be so dim in seeing the theme, even when I've completed the grid and it's staring me in the face. (Granted, I don't spend a lot of time at it, either.) The part I did get today (doubling letters) helped my solve, but I figured there was more to it than met my eye. Indeed. Clever! And thank you for explaining!
Very interesting puzzle that played harder for me than typical Thursdays. The theme and twist would have felt more impressive if just last Wednesday, AVCX had not run the same theme with the exact revealer in the same location in the grid.
On the Easy side of Easy-Medium for a Thursday. The rebodes were well-behaved and discovering that the answers worked in both directions without them was a terrific "aha moment".
Only three overwrites:
2D: DE nada before DE RIEN (I need to learn the difference between French and Spanish)
37D: HIs before HIM (I need to brush up on my Italian and German too) / 47A: sOPS (a perfectly good way to clean up a plate) before MOPS
45D: Sle[DD]ED before SKI[DD]ED
Where did I just see this theme? Was it the wsj? Av club? I swear it was only in the past few days…
Relatively easy, once I grasped the theme. And really fun! Thanks, Teddy and Rich. And congrats! 🥇
I got the happy music after filling the circles with nothing! (Didn’t get to the doubles.)
Just curious if anyone using the app had it finish before putting in a final circled double letter? I was wrapping up in the northwest, and it played the music before I could fill in the hole in 3-Down and 19-across. It shows as complete, so I guess the "or nothing" part is also valid.
I left all the circles empty and did not get happy music. So I finished up by filling them in, which was actually quite a nice way to grok the theme. Not a big Thursday fan here, but this one I really liked. Fun!
Same here, except I was finishing in the SE corner! I filled every other circled double letter except that one, which was empty when the puzzle finished. Very cool it accepted “double or nothing” as the theming said, but I would have loved to finish it off so the grid looks complete instead of having just one blank circled square!
Ok theme, that’s been done a bit. Think the DD ones are the best, followed by the SS.
My main problem with this puzzle is just the plethora of double letters answers all over the grid that aren’t part of the theme. If this is your theme, and using that revealer, you can’t have more double letters in non-theme answers than theme answers, if any at all. Granted the 5 circles give you 10 double letter words, but still. 5 double lettered circles, then, like what 6 or 7 double letter answers elsewhere. What about those doubles, huh? Oh, just leave those doubles? ok. Sorry just going to be old school here and say that’s a foul. @Lewis’s aplphadopplawhatever off the charts today.
CSPOTS? C.mon. We all know it’s C-Notes. Go ahead, google C-Spots and see what you get. Have fun scrolling until finding anything related currency.
And oh, quite the Letteral we have here today. Not just a positional letter in a word, but a DOTTED one at that.
Great write up by Eli, but boy would I have liked to read Rex’s thoughts today.
Same thing happened to me in the exact same place. And it made it hard to move through the puzzle post-solve because it kept taking me back to the blank square.
Struggled in the center section - I didn’t think there would be other double letter pairs in the grid since that was the theme - so Dr. seuSS and skEEter looked “out of bounds” as well as the obvious answers - so that kind of messed up my solving karma.
I was looking for the “there’s got to be more to this theme than just double letters” angle as I was solving but didn’t get it until our guest host explained it here. Pretty neat theme Idea which probably took a fair amount of time and energy to construct.
Is OLESTRA still a thing? I don’t remember much about it, but if I recall it was the subject of some sort of controversy about 20 or 30 years ago. Note: a quick scan of the internet indicates that it no longer is in use in the U.S. (although the clue makes it sound current, which of course it may be in other countries).
Very impressive to me especially because I only really got the theme when I came here. I thought I had it early, when I suspected 9-down would be BLOSSOM (didn’t think of BLOOM), then got the revealer with just a couple of crosses. I thought the theme would be that you put double letters in the circles, which worked one way (DOUBLE) while you ignore the double letters the other way (NOTHING). But the double letters were clearly working both ways, so I thought the NOTHING was just the circle representing zero. I didn’t know that DOUBLE and NOTHING worked both ways until I read Eli. The only place where I briefly saw the NOTHING side was LONG OS, but I figured it was wrong after I saw LONG ODDS.
Some commenters said the same theme with the same revealer was recently done in AVCX. Did they use the same DOUBLE/NOTHING pairs, or some of them? I thought coming up with ten that worked this well was amazing - I’ll be even more impressed if there were entirely (or mostly) different ones in the AVCX.
I wonder if a puzzle purist would say there should be no other double letters in the puzzle besides the themers - there were lots.
Never heard of “hundo” and before I got CUSSED, I wondered if they might be G SPOTS. “Oh, darling, yes! You found my hundo!”
Although I like the theme, SEAEELS/FEELINGS is some weak sauce. But definitely not easy for me, thanks to clues for e.g. BTS, BUN, FOG and LSD.
very clever. I finished no errors per the app. but I did not really complete the whole thing is I misinterpreted the reveal. DOUBLEORNOTHING - I thought some circled squares were left blank and some you fill in with a double letter. SO I had, for instance TOY crossing DIED with no entry on the circle. Then I had SEAEELS crossing FEELINGS with a double E in the circle. it never dawned on me it could have been SEALS/FLINGS. Once the music and Congratulations went off I thought I was done. But not really. Great puzzle.
I finished quickly and then wasted about 10 minutes trying to figure out how P, M, S, D, and E could form a meta. That would have been cool.
My memory of HS German failed me - I put in HIs for “ihn” even though it didn’t feel quite right, but sOPS was at least a defensible answer for “cleans (up)”, so…
Great theme I didn’t completely understand until the end - I thought the circled squares had to be one or the other, double or nothing, not that they could be both, although it bothered me that I had only left one blank. When I didn’t get the happy music, I figured out that a double letter could go into the blank (DRI(PP)ED and RI(PP)LE). I still didn’t get the happy music and eventually had to look at the answers to catch my German mistake.
I solved the puzzle, but there was no happy music because I couldn't put two letters in the circled squares. Very annoying after solving a tricky and well constructed Thursday crossword.
Can someone explain how to put two letters in one circle?
SCUSE. That’s not how you spell scusi. Or scusa. I don’t want to hurt the constructors FEELINGS but this puzzle made me SAD. If I never see another reference to a gun or a real gun again it will be too soon. Sorry to be a downer but the there wasn’t much pay off for this theme. Show of hands last time any one used RIPPLE as a VERB. Annoying as a mosquito on the back of my NAPE or according to the puzzle a SKEETER
AVCX puzzle last week! Also had SEA EELS and BLOSSOMS! Weird.
Played tough for me but once I grokked the fullness of the theme, I was delighted and impressed. Nice!
FH
After seeing TOMMY [GUN] in today's puzzle, I was so overcome with ennui that I had to go back to bed and recover my composure. Then I saw Eli's 'joke' about someone getting his head bitten off by a seal. What is it with this site? All the violence!!
Cool theme and great revealer . This puzzle just flowed! Most enjoyable Thursday in some time, if not the toughest.
@swac, had same experience as you. From comments above, it's unclear whether filling in blanks was necessary at all.
Jonesy – The identical theme was used in the AVCX crossword a week ago. Same revealer and 2 of the same themers. You can see the grid here: https://crosswordfiend.com/2024/02/06/wednesday-february-7-2024/#av
I'm really curious what the constructors (and Rex) would make of that. I'm not suggesting anything nefarious but it's quite a coincidence. I know themes sometimes repeat but usually there's a gap of several years when this happens.
Possibly the constructors somehow encountered the same inspiration, on the internet, at a crossword puzzle tournament, etc.?
When I was doing the puzzle, I kept thinking I had already solved it and it was being mistakenly rerun. Then I'd think, hmmm, I don't remember that clue.
Neat - two sided theme but the overall fill was rough. Similar to the shaded squares yesterday - circles do not show up when solving on the app in dark mode. I inadvertently learned that the app will accept both the double rebus or an empty square because my last entry was DIMMED and I got the happy tune without filling in the MM.
SKEETER
OLESTRA, DOTTED I, ENDEAR etc are brutally bad - just trying far too hard. I get it - the trick is tough to build and the grid suffers but BTS, EPI, AID and other shorts don’t help. did like the AMORE - SCUSE pair and LISSOME.
Fun theme - actual solve enjoyment not so much.
If my words did glow
Wordplay heaven, this was. Here you have a word with double letters, then you take out the double letters and it makes another word. That’s level one. Then you come up with a definition that perfectly fits both words. That’s level two. Then level one and two repeat with a crossing word that involves the SAME double letter.
WHAAAAAT? REAAAAAALY? And then the Katzes katzenjammered five of these in the grid, conforming to the demands of symmetry?
Then, when you think you’ve been blown away, they, in their notes (on WordPlay), calmly reveal ten more excellent word pairs that follow the theme, that they had to leave on the editing room floor?
Thumbs sky high. But the wordplay didn’t stop there. I love it when there is a ratatat of a-one wordplay clues throughout the solve, as there was today, underscoring the solving task with smiles.
This was a feast of entertainment.
Throw in the gorgeous LISSOME, plus AGO crossing AGO, and the magnificent PuzzPair© of ONO crossing LONG O’S – and I am high on life before breakfast. Which maybe should be a bowl of Special K.
Thank you, you two, and come back soon, will you please?
This is an exact copy of a theme by Jack Murtagh in his AVCX puzzle on February 7th. It’s so similar it’s insane. The whole theme is copied directly and Jack did it much much better. I’m appalled. Total thievery.
Pretty tricky stuff today, and any corner that puts LONGO S over DOTTEDIS is asking for trouble. It took me forever to make "hundos", which I have never heard, into "hundreds" and that into CSPOTS, which I also have never heard. I mean, really.
On the other hand, we do have a clue like "Jamaican tangelo", which is the way clues used to be written, and enough foreign references to make me happy. Sorry for all you kids who don't know "That's AMORE, but it was a while ago. And we have another one of those A-words that make me cringe. Today it's AREEL.
Best Thursday gimmick in a while, TK and RK. The Kind I like. Resounding Kudos to you both, and thanks for all the fun.
MEDIUM (2:01, while taking it very easy, very distracted, solving diagonal only, bathing the dog, washing the car, making a special dinner, enjoying that Valentine’s dinner with my freshly cleaned pup, playing IMSQUEEZY, thinking I’M QUEASY (took the EELS out too early I guess), and posting obligatory “thoughts and prayers!” and “not one more!” on Facebook.)
Rex and replacements - you take the “humble” out of “humblebrag”. If we stipulate that you’re WAAAAAY brighter than us so we don’t need to know your times, will you stop posting them? And if you MUST share, will you please quit listing the various handicaps you suffered (created for yourselves) in displaying your potent puzzle prowess?
Enjoyed today’s offering. Congrats to the parent and offspring (don’t want to offend anyone by alluding to gender) behind it!
Hung up on 9D for the longest time wanting Bloom, but breaking the reveal sped things up. The last to fall was Sea Eels. I Cussed at that one (not really). Liked that there were a Fatal Amore, a Lissome Apeman, and a Long Odds game of Snooker.
@Carolla, I couldn't figure out why I knew RAPA NUI yesterday, but reading your post reminded me. I read about it in the 7th grade in a publication we got at school called the Weekly Reader. That you remembered it was two words is doubly impressive!
By the way, just pointing out that this is the third day in a row and the fifth time in the last six days that the Times puzzle has had L/R as opposed to the usual rotational symmetry. Don’t know if this is an aberration or the start of a trend…
Super impressed and even delighted with the theme, the execution and the tone of this masterpiece. Kudos!
@Eli. In your first theme comment, you meant DIMMED or DIED
A piece of junk.
Is it really a matter of brighter or simply this is a skill set. Love seeing the times —keeps me humble and motivated. But, to each his/herself.
The "remove the double letter" trick doesn't work with "dimmed" to "dim". The result would be "died".
Yep - “finished” with an empty square
Great puzzle. Very impressive. I think ALI was still named Cassius Clay when he threw his medal from the Second Street Bridge. Check out “Louisville Lip” by Freakwater. Also, just because PolitiFact and other fact checkers rate something as TRUE doesn’t make it so. They are often wrong and come with their own biases. Thirdly, the guest blogger is a tool.
I click on the More button, then the Rebus button
DIED not DIM, but otherwise spot on with the review. Painful fill, and painful day for a gun clue. Yesterday was the 6th anniversary of the Parkland shooting where 2 of my kids were going to school that day. But to your point is there ever really a good day for that?
I didn’t like ENDEAR either - I put ENDWAR because it seemed a more likely answer to the clue
Hey All !
Well, gee. Never realized you can take the DOUBLE away, and they are still valid answers! Holy moly, what a Theme! After the Happy Music, the NYT desktop App changed my DOUBLEs to empty squares, and I was like, "What in tarhooties is this?", Still not realizing the NOTHING part. Silly brain.
Very cool idea/Theme, with a super apt Revealer, only wish I had my AHA during the solve.
Seems this week is Left/Right Symmetry Week. Is this the third one I think? Getting some different type puzs.
41 Blockers, the extra 2 as cheater squares in the first row. I'm sure the constructors tried to not have them, but if it gets you cleaner fill, then hey, it's fine.
A bit, 😁, Hundos are CNOTES, not CSPOTS. Just sayin'.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Bob Mills - I use the iOS (IPad) app. On the lower right of the keyboard is a REBUS key.
Hit that and you can type in multiple letters or numbers in a circle. Hit REBUS again to get out. May not be the only way out nor the keyboard configuration for Apple alernatives).
Hope that brings you happy music (but also remember that you may have made a mistake elsewhere - I’ve wasted a few precious moments on puzzles putting in different rebus combinations, wondering what the magic rebus formula is. Only to later find that earlier I had DUH instead of DOH! At which point I yell both DUH! and D’OH!
Your explanation should say DIMMED and DIE not "dim"
I'm curious what the software accepted for the rebus squares. I started out leaving them blank, but as I kept going I put in (non-rebus) single letters to remind me what the doubled letter would be. I thought it might get accepted, but no such luck... I had to go back and put the doubled letters in. When I got the happy music, though, it cleared them all out. I wondered if, had I left them blank, the software would have done the opposite and filled them in. From the discussion, though, it sounds like leaving them all blank wasn't accepted, but leaving some blank was OK???
By the way, as I write this, there's an error in the writeup. The first theme answer should be "DIMMED or DIED", not "DIMMED or DIM". It'll probably be corrected 5 minutes after I post this...
American values club
Fun to unravel for me. But I would have connected Karl with the Streets of San Francisco costar, Karl Malden. Points for naming the other. JB
Dr. A – It takes months or longer between the time a puzzle is submitted and its publication, so it wouldn't be possible to see a puzzle published somewhere else, steal the idea, and get into the Times in a week.
Andrew – Funniest comment of the day!
Question on the Jayne Mansfield (38D) clue: How is “Aware of” INON?
ON TO, even UP ON would work.
If you were to tell the nice detective you were IN ON the scam, wouldn’t that be implicating your involvement, not that you were aware of all the “Nigerian prince with cash-flow issues” emails being sent from your computer?
Do you have a "rebus" button on your screen? Click it and you'll be able to put whatever you want in the square.
I very much doubt the Katzes saw the AVCX one a few days ago, constructed this one in a matter of hours and got it immediately approved by the NYT. Just their bad luck that the other one ran first.
15 down should read "Italian Apologies" - SCUSE is plural. "Italian apology" the answer would be "SCUSA"
Can someone please clear up "second of five" for DOTTEDI for me? Complete mystery.
Overly-segmented grid, some truly ghastly fill, and Friday+ clueing, all in service of an admittedly clever theme. Not sure why the constructors and Shortz went so out of their way to amp up the cluing difficulty when the theme was already so constraining they had to put black squares everywhere to fill around it. Technically admirable, but an absolute slog to solve.
I mentioned to Lewis last month that since, unlike him, I tend not to remember puzzles once I've done them -- and certainly not for an entire year -- that I planned to keep a running list of puzzles that I considered candidates for Puzzle of the Year 2024. "It won't be long," I said. "I'll only write down puzzles I think are extraordinary."
Today I made my first entry to the list.
The cleverness of the concept and the brilliant way it's executed is equaled only by how smart the puzzle made ME feel. I got the trick at DIMMED/DIED/TOMMY/TOY -- I was still struggling at the DRIPPED/DRIED/RIPPLE/RILE section and I immediately said out loud to no one in particular: "Aha! It's DOUBLE OR NOTHING!" And so it was.
The way the meaning changes between having FLINGS and having FEELINGS; between being CUED and being CUSSED is nothing short of genius. This must have been really hard to construct, I'd imagine, but it was a joy to solve. !'ll nominate it for POY when the time comes -- now that I know I'll remember.
Happy music with no circles filled and wondered where's the "double" in "double or nothing". Morning denseness.
DIMMED and DIED
Thx Teddy & Rich, for the DOUBLE pleasure this A.M.! 😊
Downs-o in progress.
Didn't take long to grok the theme; liking it!
Just a few spots to finish up, e.g., the upper and lower Midwest. Haven't sussed out the 'gun' clue yet.
Also, a couple of other answers not totally convinced of at this point: SCUSI, and whatever consonant is going into 30D, 'rental lingo'.
It will be interesting to see if the 'double' letters must be rebused or can the cells be left blank. I've chosen the go with the rebuses.
Onward! 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a dap to all 👊 🙏
Medium? Hardest Thursday ever for me. Between being completely flummoxed by “hundos” and that top middle section that perplexed me for forever, that was the slog to end all slogs.
DIMMED or DIED for 17A (not “dimmed or dim”).
@Lewis 8:00 - You said it! Thank you for your eloquence and sharp eye.
I did the top half of the puzzle with NOTHINGs only: that is, I left the circles blank because I saw only the words that worked with them empty. I figured that sooner or later their purpose would be revealed - as it indeed soon was. I can't tell you how astonished I was to see there were six new words with a DOUBLE letter cross that still fit the clues. Amazing! I'm glad I understood how the rebus worked at that point, because I thought the last two theme pairs were much harder: knowing that I needed DOUBLE letters helped a lot, especially with those SEA EELS. And LONG OS - LONG ODDS is really great.
Do-over: SCUSi (@Phillyrad1999 7:39 - I can't figure out what's going on with SCUSE either). Help from previous puzzles: BST. No idea: Hundos, Windowpane.
@JD 8:15 - Weekly Reader! Now that I hadn't remembered!
I understand the indignation about duplication of another puzzle elsewhere--but please remember that not everyone solves puzzles on the day they come out. That AVC puzzle is sitting in my to-do pile right now. I'd probably have seen the gimmick pretty quickly, but still...
As for this one -- somehow, for each of the 5 rebus squares I notice either the "double" answer or the "nothing" one, but never both. Three doubles, and nothing for SEALS/FLINGS (I mean, SEA EELS? Really?) That would have been the opposite of LONG ODDS for a double-or-nothing bet. I had to come here before I saw the alternate entries. Impressive!
I can't decide whether to admire or detest the clue for DOTTED I. I think I'll admire it as a whimsical parody of the usual letteral clues, such as the one for LONG OS.
And I want to defend BTS, as clued. Cluing it as "K-Pop group" would be boring, and the clue they used gives just enough information to puzzle it out. BbS would be too straightforward, so Bulletproof Boy Scouts must be a translation from another language, and it's a three-letter group that's enough of a FAD to be crossworthy--and there you are.
I do think PSYCHED is just 'pumped' though -- you can add 'Totally' to either one.
I know this hard to believe, but I'm not up-to-date on LSD street names.
I really liked the theme. It took me longer than it should have to fully grasp it, but when it clicked, I thought it was really cool.
That said, I really wish the online solve needed the circles to be filled to be complete. I was stuck on two of them and had them blank, fixed an error somewhere else, and got the completion note with the blank spaces. I figured them out after that, but I feel like I lost out on a bit of the accomplishment on this one.
“Oh, darling, yes! You found my hundo!” -- Hilarious!!
I love a good BTS (Bacon, Tomato and SLAW) with COKE when I'm in the Northeast.
Frenchman: Can you tell me the name of a city in Connecticut that starts with D?
Me: Darien
Frenchman: Merci
Me: DE RIEN
This puzzle took me longer than usual because I spent about 2 hours playing Twister while holding two mirrors in order to get NAPE. Not being within shouting distance of LISSOME, it left me exhausted, but far more knowledgeable about my fuselage.
I GIST loved this theme. Thanks, TEDDY KATZ AND RICH KATZ.
Hi Bob 😊 To put two (or more) letters into one square: first before typing letters click on the “Rebus” button on the keyboard. A pop-up square will appear where you can type in the two (or more) letters. When you are done entering the letters, click on Rebus button again. The pop-up square will disappear, and there will be however many letters you typed into that one original square. Presto!
Medium. I too recently did the AVCX puzzle with this theme. Very deja vu.
SW was the toughest corner. DOTTED I, LONG Os and LSD did not come easily.
Clever idea, reasonably smooth grid, liked it, but I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t just done it.
Thanks for
And thanks for filling in and the true a-ha moment in both ways!
Very cool puztheme idea, with superb revealer. Didn't have double trouble solvin it … just splatzed double letters into the circles, and was happy as a bi-valved clam. Didn't see the "nothing" angle, until much later on.
Wowzers. E/W symmetry, once again. Did the NYTPuz just start payin extra, for that?
staff weeject pick: TO( )Y. M&A's fave kind of gun, no contest. As far as I'm concerned, can do away with all of em, except for squirt guns. Had to shoot M16's in the my army days -- didn't do a thing for m&e. Every body part stayed the same length, etc.
no-knows: DERIEN. And "Merci" to all the Katzes, for showin m&e so much mercy on a Thursday.
fave stuff: ENABLE/ENDEAR. PSYCHED. SKEETER.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Katz dudes. Y'all musta decided it was a double-or-nuthin constructioneerin project.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
This needed a Rex write up, starting with double letters EVERYWHERE that weren't part of the theme....
Complaining about the error on SCUSE. ‘Scuse is something we say in the US, but in Italy it is scusi or scusa.
My baffled hat - worn today.
May I start by saying that @Fun-CFO 6:58 has a good post today. I agree with your second paragraph. Why double letters in other words. SEUSS could write a book.
I look at SCUSE and think about my Italian friends. They would yell SCUSi, SCUSI. Hundos, where have you been my entire life doing crosswords and never meeting you in person and hope I never do. I TOYed with G SPOT. Nah.
I like DOUBLE things but I felt they should've stayed in the confines of the theme. You snuck one SNOOKER SKEETER into the fray and I got distracted.
I learned about Karl and his FOG. I lived in SF and never ever met you. If you had a good bar named after you, I would've....Is this trivia good to know? @Mathgent...what do you think?
@Questinia....Good to see you! I wish you'd pop in more often.....
Felt panicked the whole solve with so many sideways clues, but finished with only one square unsolvable in BUN/NOFEE. The N could've been lots of letters and I'm not up on the names of hairstyles. Chignon is a pretty word.
Seeing from Eli's grid my "nothing" squares can also hold a rebus. Huh. Cool.
The revealer turned out to be helpful getting the puzzle going. Filled it in with only OU in place and was delighted it was right.
ANGST is my second favorite word after ENNUI and before DIABOLICAL.
I am reminded on seeing SKEETER one of the last remaining good things about Colorado is we don't have many mosquitoes, of course those we have sometimes carry West Nile virus and they can kill you, so slightly more than a garden party annoyance.
Hm:
Don't know BTS as clued, clue for VERB was Saturday-level vague, don't know why ERIE are cat people, I learned I don't know what LISSOME means, could not dredge DE RIEN out of my college French memories, never heard of PoltiFact but I am positive whatever they deem true is debatable since truth seems ever more maleable over time, never remember ROUE, AREEL is awful.
Tee-Hee: Make love? ENDEAR {ugh} is really a stretch. Proudly put in GSPOTS for CSPOTS and never saw the irony or wrongness forever. Yeeshk.
Uniclues:
1 Prepare to bother Bill.
2 Create homo sapiens.
3 When I got fat.
4 Tysts where everything works out great.
5 Put butter on top.
6 When you're excited to scrawl little hearts above the letter.
7 Turns out it doesn't enlighten you.
8 Fabulous fellah feelin' funny.
9 Perfect country or not, it's freeeezing there.
1 RILE NYE ... CUED
2 ENDEAR APE MEN
3 BUN AGO
4 LONG ODDS FLINGS
5 SNOOKER OLESTRA
6 DOTTED I PSYCHED
7 AVERSE LSD DATA (~)
8 FOP ANGST AREEL (~)
9 SWEDEN GIST SAD
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Rides a cat to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. USES MEWL ROUTE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There's a typo in your first theme explainer.
A DOTTED I is the second letter in “five.”
And here I thought that KARL got the name in honor of Karl Malden of “Streets of San Francisco.”
@Nancy 10:07 “Your’re exactly right,” as Tony Romo incessantly says to Jim Nantz (as I enter my annual Post Season Trauma Dismay).
To find TEN (10% of a Hundo!) answers that work with or without the doubled (same) letter is quite a feat. This being the only xword I do, can’t comment on any similar puzzles elsewhere (though no doubt a coincidence, not a conspiracy).
For those AREEL from the word g-u-n (spelled it out rather than t-r-i-g-g-e-r anyone), how about “what David Spade was once known for, maybe”. TOMMY Boy and Boy TOY both work! Though the second term is liable to set off Mr. Spade’s legal team for the utterly unjustified libel (hey, Liable/Libel! - nah, that doesn’t work. Which underscores how difficult this theme truly is!)
And for those upset by a loose seal biting off Buster’s hand (not head), it’s from the brilliant Arrested Development.
ARM OFF
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMRcIOjdojU
9:45 anonymous sorry I forgot to mention that second letter in the Word FiVe needed a dot as lowercase
Another of those tricky gambits that add delight to today’s solve
Second of "five" - the second letter in the word "five" is a dotted I.
Love this puzzle. Some breezy and fun. I thought that the theme was incredibly clever. Also liked the fill. Loved the answer for "2nd of 5".
The second letter of the word "five" is a "dotted i ". Thoroughly lame.
It seems very wrong to me that the app doesn't accept single letters in the theme squares. A single letter is what gets turned into 'double' or nothing to create the answers.
With a rebus or weird theme like this, the app should err on the side of acceptance.
Hi Eli; good to see you. Thx for your write-up! I too had a groan at 'gun' (reflex action).
Downs-only; was oh so close.
Had (g)O FEE
Saw that SCUSi had to be SCUSE.
Speaking of Italian, AMORE and being the day after Valentine's, I was reminded of this: Lady and the Tramp, Bella Notte spaghetti scene.
My meager knowledge of languages stood me in good stead td.
Fwiw, I did the puz on Across Lite, which accepted the rebuses. As an experiment, I then did it in the NYT Games web version, leaving the 'doubles' cells empty, and got the happy music.
Fun adventure; enjoyed the challenge! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a dap to all 👊 🙏
Facepalm! Thank you!
One day after Valentine's Day we get FATAL AMORE top center in the grid – a promo for a double bill of "Moonstruck", which used "That's AMORE", and "FATAL Attraction", which came out the same year?
SCUSE: incorrect clue! Scuse means plural apologies or excuses in Italian. A single apology is scusa. "Excuse me" is scusa (informal) or scusi (formal).
Otherwise color me impressed with the theme. Rich Katz has contributed three prior Times puzzles, all Sundays, all of which I liked.
BLOSSOM
...und...
BLOOM
I despaired of ever figuring out what went in the little circles. I left them all blank and filled in the rest of the grid. The revealer left me puzzled. Then, post-solve, I gritted my teeth and thought and voila! RIPPLE crossing DRIPPED. I raced around filling in the rest of the circles and my FEELINGS towards this puzzle rose immensely.
Great job, Teddy and Rich Katz, thanks!
I was thrown by the non-rebus double s in lissome and now see there are other doubles scattered around the puzzle. That seems the kind of thing that would irk Rex.
37D clue is ridiculous considering 47A can be either SOPS or MOPS.
It just occurred to me that when you remove the double SS from BLOSSOM, technically you still have a double, i.e. the OO in BLOOM. Though the revealer does specify the letters in the circled squares, so I guess it's not an issue.
I got my “Congratulations” with all five circled squares left empty.
I'm quick to grasp the obvious once it has been pointed out to me. (Maybe related to those five journeys through a windowpane back in '75.) I left the circles empty, i.e., had "nothing" in them and got the happy music. Went back to see how "Double" (literally) would work in the circles but totally whiffed on that. SAD.
I'll ADD my voice to what @Twangster 9:27 said about similar puzzles being published in different venues close together in time. It could many months between submitting a puzzle, getting a reply saying it had been accepted and getting it published. If there are revisions involved it could be a year or more. I think that makes casting any aspersions on similarly themed puzzles coming out barely a month apart completely unwarranted.
I think SKEETER is a classic Southernism. "Son, where'd you get all them there red bumps? Ma, I been SKEETER bit." There was even a country music singer named SKEETER Davis. Here's a YouTube video of her singing "The End Of The World".
Easy and clever, despite SCUSE being inexcusable.
And, in what dark, smelly neighborhood bar do they make change for a hundo or a CSPOT?
I got the happy music at the end even though I left some squares with nothing which I thought was the whole point of the or nothing reference. I wish the app people would take note of this.
I don’t understand the clue for “Windowpane”? What does that have to do with LSD?
Also please help with DOTTED I for “second of five”?? I just don’t understand!
Anyone else have “gas” before “fad”?
@Bob Mills if you solve on a laptop/desktop computer, just hit the ESC key on the keyboard, type in as many letters as you want/need in one square, and hit enter. i believe i learned that trick here some time ago, and now it's time to pass it on :)
-stephanie
DH had ONTARIO as the SECOND IN FIVE - so plausible as from HOMES! The musical quad was ABBA - hard to give up on that!
SCUSE me while I kiss the sky.
Har.
RooMonster SCUSE Guy
I'm so impressed with this theme and blown away that it worked in both the acrosses and downs.
Puzzles that result in double answers (i.e. often, the 'wacky' answer and the ordinary answer) usually are often disappointing to me because (almost always)only one of the answers works with the clue; the second answer may in fact be a real word or phrase, but it's just a random word or phrase, totally disconnected from the cluing. The fact that both the answers work with the clue - the same clue - is stunning. No dangling, un-clued answers. Bravo!
In mine, I had every square filled but it said I was missing something. I double-checked everything and it was correct. So then I blanked out every circle and it finally congratulated me on finishing the puzzle. Weird.
I just hate That’s Amore and it shows up again after a short time! Oh well.
Hey @Roo=
Scuse me while I kiss this guy.
Famous mondegreen.
Surely it was the Ten Commandments that came from Sinai; the burning bush was at Mt. Horeb!
The second letter of the word “five” is a dotted i
Oh boy this puzzle reeked of "no if you're under 40" but in a couple of places, but overall really like the theme so the fill is forgivable.
But WHAT is c-spots. I think they mean c-notes, which is a well known short hand for hundred dollar bills. A cspot is your cervix. So. I don't I can't even get google to tell me what's going on there.
As an added “bonus” theme, I noticed that the puzzle was written by a couple of cool Katz and the grid resembles the face of a cat (nose at bottom, whiskers, squinted eyes, and a high topped bridge). Maybe I’m only seeing what I want to see and it wasn’t intentional - but I like to believe that these constructors frequently fill grids that resemble their namesake.
Wikipedia’s article on Mount Horeb says “most scholars consider Sinai and Horeb to have been different names for the same place.” John Calvin believed that Sinai was the east side, and Horeb the west side, of a two-peaked mountain. The Google Earth view of Mt Sinai — known today as Jabal Mousa — does in fact show the north side as having two peaks.
@PHV "Windowpane" is from the 1980s, so you don't need to be any more up-to-date than a betamax video rental for that one.
For those keeping track of what the apps do, I typed a single letter into my app for each circle, and still got the win, once I had given up trying to get ENDwAR to work.
Very, very, very clever. I didn't put anything into the circles, and wondered why the "double" was in the clue. Aha! And duh!
Well done, constructor!
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
Started in the north central and immediately got TO[MM]Y, while the double-M worked across as well. So, just double a letter in the circle, pretty basic for a Thursday. On I went, merrily solving, until I uncovered the revealer--and suddenly realized that the SAME CLUE worked if the circles contained "NOTHING." That made me say "Wow!" out loud.
How do people FIND stuff like this? Amazing. Just when I start to think I might have a smattering of intelligence, these guys come along and put me to utter shame. So far the aha moment of the year.
Yes, defects appear; they almost have to. LONGO[ ]S is bad enough, but must we put up with DOTTEDI in the same corner? A lot to forgive for the result, but OK, birdie.
Wordle phew, too many shots at GGGBG.
One person thought the term windowpane as a name for LSD was newfangled, and another said it was from the 80's. I can assure you that it has been around at least from the middle to late 60's. Not that I ever partook.
Oooooh!!!
Look at all the colors!!!!
SNOOKER ME NOT
I'm PSYCHED when it's TRUE,
LONGODDS, DOUBLE your bet.
Hopes DIMMED? Don't ARGUE,
I'm FEELING NOTHING but NET.
--- TOMMY "SKEETER" RILEY
I partook acouple of times, and yes, that term goes waaaay back. Common form of LSD back then was a tiny paper square impressed into quadrants, thus looking like a windowpane.
Speaking of quadrants, I had the most difficulty in the NW. NOT much up on my French. But nothing written over.
Wordle birdie.
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