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Origin story in Genesis 11:1-9 / THU 3-14-24 / An irrational reason to celebrate? / Geocaching necessity, in brief / Something read by a chiromancer / Carolina NHL'ers, informally / System that ended in 1917 / It may be thrown by a vaquero
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic
Relative difficulty: Easy
Some scientists [🤷🏼♀️]:
- ALBERT EINSTEIN (11D: Scientist who was notably born on 33-Down (1879)
- STEPHEN HAWKING (3D: Scientist who notably passed away on 33-Down (2018)
- EULER (is he part of this???) (29D: Mathematician known for the constant "e" (2.71828))
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.The WPA's first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion (about $15 per person in the U.S., around 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. In 1942, the WPA played a key role in both building and staffing internment camps to incarcerate Japanese Americans. [...]
In one of its most famous projects, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. The five projects dedicated to these were the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of immense importance to American history. Theater and music groups toured throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the development of professional archaeology in the US. (wikipedia)
• • •
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| [2023, co-starring ALIA Shawkat] |
The one day the puzzle decides *not* to do the double-clue thing and it's the one day they really could've used it—you know that, in addition to the WPA, the NRA is *also* a [New Deal org.] (National Recovery Administration). No idea why constructors (editors) are still going with this garbage gun org. It's an unforced error, tonally. There's no reason to use the gun org. That corner that it's in isn't even strong. OPEN ERA? TSARISM? APSE? URSA? Try harder! Why am I having to tell the NYTXW two days in a row now to just do its job and fill grids professionally, in a reasonably pleasing way. I like THE TOWER OF BABEL (17A: Origin story in Genesis 11:1-9) and PURPLE PROSE (20A: Colorful language?) fine. If this were a themeless, and the rest of the grid were similarly bright, I would be happy. But instead I get random famous scientists and a picture of one of those plastic doohickies that keeps the pizza box from collapsing onto your pizza and then I get to count rows and columns, which are almost the same in number as they are any other day of the week. And what is with EULER? Is he thematic? The clue says he's known for a "constant" (29D: Mathematician known for the constant "e" (2.71828)) and "π" is a "constant," so I thought maybe EULER was being roped into this clown show. But then he has no symmetrical counterpart (except the great Dr. SOAMI) (28D: "Same here"). Dr. SOAMI keeps insisting that he, too, is a mathematician, but I'm not inclined to believe him.
No trouble with this one at all except the trouble I made for myself, most notably botching the [New Deal org.]. My brain got stuck somewhere between NRA and TVA and I ended up writing in NEA, which is a teachers union, not part of the New Deal alphabet soup of orgs. That NEA kept the two long answers up top from coming into view as quickly as they should've. Stupid of me to write the org. in at all, as there are roughly 4,033 three-letter New Deal orgs. (give/take). I didn't know SWAY BAR right away (47A: Component in a car's suspension system), but that's about the only other answer I had any trouble with. Oh, except "No BUENO," which ... again, why would you do that to BUENO? (35A: "No ___" ("Unacceptable")). Unacceptable, indeed.
Additional notes:
- 9D: Apply, as sunscreen (RUB ON) — had PUT ON. Then DAB ON.
- 25D: Carolina N.H.L.'ers, informally ('CANES) — as in HURRI-...
- 32D: Starting point for a slippery slope argument (GRAY AREA) — I don't think of GRAY AREA as having any necessary, or even tight, connection with "slippery slope arguments." People just extrapolate in implausible or logically untenable or extreme ways. Don't need an area to be particularly gray in order to do this.
I liked how the clues leaned into cinema today (ETHAN Hawke and ALIA Shawkat and "ALIEN" and the horror film character who is home ALONE (or is she!?)). But that's small consolation today. Can we have a moratorium on PI DAY puzzles now. This one's clever revealer clue (33D: An irrational reason to celebrate?) wasn't even original (it was first used in a 2021 Robyn Weintraub puzzle). I can handle all the corny mathiness you've got if I just get something properly *puzzle*-y to work through on Thursdays. This one had zero puzzle juice. Very disappointing.
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110 comments:
I liked it more than OFL but truly not a Thursday puzzle. I al not a speed solver and still solved it in under eight minutes, about 20 minutes under my average. It would should have run on a Tuesday except the theme forced it into today.
@Rex, the NEA is also the National Endowment for the Arts, which may have been what you were thinking of? Understandably. I always think of the NEA first and then take a second to remember the WPA. There’s an episode of The West Wing that may be at play, there, at least in my head.
Yeah, it was a quick solve for me as well. Didn't even see SOAMI or ALIA (of whom I've never heard before today, nor her show)--they just fell in with the crosses--but for all the crosswordese I enjoyed it more than @Rex. It took me until 5A to realize that it was, in fact, March 14--Happy Pi Day!--and then the long downs fell into place very quickly. Not much resistance from the rest of the puzzle. Diverting but thin. Agree with @Rex about PURPLE PROSE and THE TOWER OF BABEL, and I don't think of LINE ONE as implying importance, but I enjoyed it as an answer.
This wasn’t solving: it was typing. No resistance at all; Monday easy. Didn’t mind the theme or references to organizations I don’t like; just wished it was harder.
An unusually quick solve for me as well, but I enjoyed it a great deal more than Rex. My experience was more “Oh, right, it’s pi day! I should get some pi this evening!” “You’re kidding me—Einstein was born on pi day??” “Hawking DIED on…??” “Hey, the grid references 3.1415!” Maybe I’m easily amused, but… I was!
I lied the idea of this puzzle and certain aspects but more could have been done with it. Don’t need to see NRA in my puzzle first thing in the morning before the first cup of coffee is down. Otherwise pretty vanilla.
Cute puzzle - it could really have been stellar, but once the NYT gets ahold of it they are going to be sure to put their own spin on things to knock it down a few notches - we all know the drill, stuff like “chiromancer” for PALM , “vaquero” for RIATA, the requisite SEMANAS here and there, and of course a gratuitous “geocaching” where it is totally unnecessary and uncalled for.
The dupe clues (Last in a series) are close enough for CrossWorld, but the nth term is not necessarily the last in a series, and et al also indicates that there are more to come, so a bit of a foul ball there as well.
Would have liked to have seen this one in the hands of a more mainstream editor - I’m just not a fan of the “look how smart I am clues”.
Two notes - the central black squares form a π not an n. Also, is this the first time we've seen "Edited by Joel Fagliano?" I know Will has been ill, but his name has still appeared on the puzzles.
Thank you for your comment on "no bueno". I thought it was just me - I was looking for no____ Dice? Deal? with a B? Beets? "Bueno" had a high "huh?" factor.
Notably, essentially the first puzzle since November 20, 1993 not edited by Will Shortz
I also cringed at 'NOBUENO'. It reads like a proud admission that 'I don't really speak Spanish, but here's a cutesy expression to demonstrate that fact'. Thankfully 'EXACTAMUNDO' wouldn't fit. It rubs me the wrong way in real life, and it's pretty lame in the alleged 'gold standard' of crossword puzzles.
Yeeshk. That's barely anything. They're probably planning it for an "easy" anthology. I am a fan of strawberry-rhubarb if the crust is done right, otherwise cherry will do, or pecan. I look forward to hearing from our scandalized mathematicians today. Something's wrong in here, I'm sure of it, and at least one number jockey will be devastated. I hope we get a gadget puzzle next Thursday.
I read 🦖 and learned I never saw the NRA clue. Due to a death in the family, I ended up stuck with some ammunition from the 70s and need to find the proper way to dispose of it. Guess what? Nobody knows. Three gun stores didn't know. The police didn't know. The front page of Google results melt your brain. I guess this is Colorado, home of the school mass murder that started it all, where nobody could conceive of the notion you'd want to have less shoot 'em up stuff.
Love OHO, hate AAH. Not everything needs to make sense.
I guess people read PURPLE PROSE, but I've never encountered a single paragraph of the stuff I could finish. The sighing, the swooning, the heaving ... it's too much.
Beginning snowmaggedon today. Planning on a full day of it. ❄️⛄
Uniclues:
1 Celebrity culling after placing them on a pedestal.
2 Shook Bill's hand or got slapped by him.
3 Bad basketball thingamabobs.
4 When you give the monster under the bed a massage.
1 A-LISTER OPEN ERA
2 MET MAHER PALM
3 HOOPS SPAMBOTS
4 RUB ON BAD DREAM
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Pig's cup of Alka-Seltzer. STY GASSER MUG.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not just Monday level, but easy-Monday level except for one square, the SWAY BAR/WENT cross, which took 14.2% of my solve time.
I liked the EULER bonus answer. I did not like the LINE ONE clue, which is just inaccurate.
"What a waste of a Thursday puzzle." Indeed.
Also, can we please banish, for all time, the "New Deal Org." clue? Maybe just replace it with "Three random letters"?
This NYT xword was edited by somebody other than Will Shortz. When did that last happen? He had a stroke, and apparently the pre-stroke queue has emptied out.
Well, I for one enjoyed it, but perhaps because I love math and physics. What are the odds that two of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th Century were born or died on this day (though to be fair, it doesn't work in their home countries where it's 14 March, not March 14th)?
One glance at the Pi symbol and a tired slog was guaranteed for all.
No cleverness, no Thursday cutesiness, just the fact that today is 3/14 so let them eat Pi yet again.
From now on, I guess, Beware The Ides of March (hell, the Roman assassination theme would have been more “fun”)…Pi-tiable.
i usually dislike Thursday puzzles, but I enjoyed this one. The mathematicians were fairly easy to get, albeit I thought at first that STEPHENHAWKING was Stephen Hawkins. I wasn't familiar with PIDAY, but trial-and-error did the trick once I realized that the clue suggested it was some kind of day.
Seems like Rex is in a bad mood today. Puzzle was ok, maybe a little easy too for a Thursday. I did miss the grid size concept which was clever.
Euler *does* have a pi tie-in, via Euler’s Identity (e^i*pi = -1).
Was trying to find a mathematical connection between pi and Genesis 11:1-9, but alas, I did not come up with one.
I like Pi and PIDAY but this puzzle infuriated me for a couple of reasons. First of all, although I’m not a mathematician (far from it), I have several scientists/math geeks in my life and my son learned Pi to 150 digits as a middle schooler. So I know that when people say Pi as a string of digits, they don’t say THREE point fourteen fifteen etc., they say THREE point one four one five nine, etc.
Also, no BUENO - this so awful I don’t even know where to start. If anyone actually says this, shame on them. Meaningless and utterly stupid in any language.
I’m also feeling cranky because EULER (have heard of him but couldn’t dredge up his name) BUENO (could never have come up with that, it’s soooo off) cross was a Natick for me. Also didn’t know the CANES. So, a bad crossword morning for me!
Even though I had ALBERTEINSTEIN I had a lot of trouble in the NOBUENO area. Had CRAMTEAM for "One might center around being unprepared for a test" and had ALIEN but had it for the clue that turned out to be ALONE. Eventually sorted it out.
Boo on you Rex. Many of us math geeks love Pi Day and I got a total thrill while solving this puzzle. It’s my annual reminder to be irrational and non-repeating. 🤓 I’m sorry you don’t enjoy the fun.
Could have saved this one for a year when Pi Day falls on a Tuesday, but I don’t mind an easy Thursday. Clever, especially the 14 x 15 grid.
I started it out thinking “Really? this is what I get on Thursday?” If it was not for ACVX and New Yorker puzzles I’d be getting depressed. Thanks for all the great recs on this blog for alternate puzzle sites. My daughter’s school makes a fun celebration out of pi day and if you have good grades in Math her teacher lets you throw a pie at his face which Is so awesome. And he’s a great teacher too.
The thing about pi day is it does something no other holiday does… it celebrates human ingenuity. As an engineer, I would love to see this be a thing. I believe the Euler reference in this puzzle is an Easter egg as his famous identity equation shows the relationship between pi, e and i; three of the most important numbers in mathematics.
Enjoyed this puzzle. Clever clues, fresh answers.
Main beef im hearing seems due to fact that Pi Day falls on a Thursday this year, so our group of solvers feels cheated out of a tough Thursday puzzle. If this puzzle showed up on a Monday or Tuesday, there'd be lots of love! It's well done
@Andrew, wait till tomorrow...
Puzzle was fine...no complaints...even learned that Albert Einstein was born on pi day so that's 😎
Anyone else get the feeling this was written for a Monday or a Tuesday? However, up day happened upon a Thursday, so here we are.
i enjoyed it. some people (mostly mathematicians) like pi(e) day. we're having a pi(e) day at work today.
I love pi day because it’s a day to celebrate the infinitely irrational.
But the puz…yeah, this has been a very rough week for the NYT crossword
Rex, you’re a scholar in literature but you can be “counted on” to swipe at math and science. These aren’t random scientists for one thing. Hawking and Einstein bracket physics. And you don’t like “constant” yet anyone through high school math or physics already sees this as a central feature, and pi is one and “e” is probably even more central/famous/astonishing. Another person here already pointed out that it includes pi. Just think about that, a constant that embodies pi, negative numbers, and “imaginary numbers” i.e. those with a square root of -1. And the derivative of e**x is e**x, i.e. it is its own slope. There is great beauty in all of this, poetry of the universe. Which brings us back to your field of literature.
I rub my sunscreen iN; Mr. Martinovic, apparently, rubs his ON (9D)
When something is unacceptabel to me, I say No "BUt NO," not No BUENO (35A)
I must have an old version of the book, where Christopher Robin says "bUT, bUT, it looks like rain!" (50A)
My chiromancer reads my whole hAnd, not just my PALM (45D)
I thought Ms. Shawkat was ALIe, not ALIA (46D)
Pretty easy for sure. I even noticed the pi symbol in the middle and I rarely look at grid art, but putting it there certainly chopped up the whole grid, which I dislike. Kind of fun to get both STEPHENHAWKING and ALBERTEINSTEIN off one letter. Didn't know ALIA as clued and same for ADA, which I thought was a reach. Any puzzle with two references to IPAS is OK with me though.
Above all, hooray for everyone disgusted by No BUENO. As a retired Spanish teacher this awfulness is worse than fingernails on a blackboard. You can leave in NRA, which at least has alternate connotations, but just get rid of this forever. Gracias.
We are going to a granddaughter's talent show and Pi Day celebration tonight, where the fare will be pizza (pi). True story.
OK Thursdecito, JM. with some fun answers. Just Make it the last one with No BUENO. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
I agree it was easy, but I found it charming. Euler certainly fits into the theme, since he discovered the relation between pi and e (mentioned in the clue) that has been called the most beautiful equation in mathematics:
e^(i*pi)+1=0
Anyhow, we math and science geeks have to endure endless major league baseball teams for the rest of the year, fair play and all that.
Once I saw the NRA clued as the gun lobby, I should have spared myself the whole writeup. Cute diversion, along with 2 mathematicians with the same number of letters around which to build mirror symmetry.
And we got a deep dive tennis clue for Nancy
Hey All !
Other than that,, Rex, how did you like the play?
Har.
I have T-Shirts from PIDAY 2015, when the date was actually 3/14/15. Raised a glass to toast at 9:27. Dorky? Sure. And I'm not even that into math. Just because. 😁
Pretty cool how the two Smart Guys were born and died on PIDAY (well, not cool that HAWKING died, but you know what I mean.) And both 14's. Odd coincidence.
I do think this would have been better as a WedsPuz, but the Calendar didn't cooperate this year.
Put me in the liked it camp. Haven't read comments yet, unsure who else is camping here. I'll just start a fire anyway, and break out the marshmallows.
Happy Thursday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
There are many ways to describe a monarchical form of government, but Tsarism is not one of them.
I didn't mind the PIDAY theme (such as it was) as much as OFL did, but I'm growing weary of these painfully easy Thursday puzzles. I come into Thursday looking for and expecting a challenge, maybe with rebuses or bending words or something fun like that, and instead I get a Tuesday-worthy typing test. This is the second Thursday in 3 weeks (maybe 4, I didn't bother to check, but recently) that I set a Thursday PR time (today was 5:44), on what otherwise has been a slower than average week-to-two-weeks. Come on NYT. Step up your game.
By the way only pie day in the US. Rest of the world its 14/3....
I loved this one! What’s not to like? Pie or pi: a delicious dessert or a beautiful constant? And two great physicists and a famous mathematician with ties to pi day. Auspicious!
I saw the big grid TT sign and immediately thought of that wonderful Sunday Pi rebus puzzle from a number of years ago. (I'm now going crazy because, once again, I've forgotten the name of the constructor so I can't track it down. Welcome to the fuzzy world of what's laughingly known as my memory.) Anyway, I was afraid that this puzzle would steal that brilliant theme idea and do something very similar. But it didn't.
This was a lot of very noticeable grid design for what seems to me a very tiny payoff. PI DAY isn't much in the way of themers and as for the grid-spanners, ALBERT EINSTEIN and STEPHEN HAWKING, while they may be scientists, I don't think that either one had much, if anything, to do with PI. They certainly didn't discover it and I'm not sure they needed to use it for anything either.
Maybe PLATO did? More likely EULER? But they're not grid-spanning answers, so they pale in comparison, puzzle-wise.
Yes, today is PI DAY. And, for all you constructors out there who haven't been able to get a puzzle into the NYT, here's one possible avenue. Pick a holiday, any holiday, and build a puzzle around it. If it's any good at all, it will probably up your chances considerably.
PS -- Can someone help me out with identifying that epic Sunday PI rebus? It's driving me crazy.
The NEA was created after WWII, in the 1960s.
Of course, in the European dating convention - used by Drs. Hawking and Einstein (though not Euler, we assume) - this makes no sense.
Unless, of course, the number 14.3 has some significance in physics and math.
Wow!Two tribes ducking it out. I am of the Math group so I didn’t much care for Rex’s disdainful review. The One thing I truly did not like was what the A stands for in IPAS. It is Ale, not Ales. The is just bad editing.
Technically pi is 3.14159……. but in my math classes always 3.1416, so a slight “wait” but ok.
Easy but pleasant - because not edited by Shortz?
Fastest ever Thursday time. Easy breezy. I don’t take issue with this puzzle like Rex, but I do expect and crave a trickier challenge on Thursdays. As I’ve gotten better and better at the NYT puzzle, my Friday and Saturday times have dropped below my Thursday times. I like the workout my brain gets on Thursdays. This left me wanting more.
Definitely Not A Thursday, but that's the way the calendar works. Pi day is just enough of a thing in my world to make it a worthwhile xword, and if it were a Wednesday, I'd be very happy with this one. Euler's constant, e (2.718...), is the second-most-famous irrational number out there, so I didn't mind seeing it getting some love next to its better-known partner. Back In The Day, this would be the day when some section of Online Math Geeks With Too Much Time on Their Hands (not naming any names, mind you) would start debating the relative merits of pi vs. tau (tau being 2xpi) as the more important number, but I guess that's died down, at least in my neck of the woods.
All of which is to say that I agree that this was too easy for a Thursday, but enjoyable as a general solve. All in all, I'll take it...
No Bueno has been a phrase here in SoCal for decades (although I wanted No Dice).
I was curious about the first telecomm satellite so went Googling…
NASA says the first was Telstar, launched in 1962
“ Launched on July 10, 1962, Telstar 1, developed by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), was the world's first active communications satellite. AT&T used the satellite to test basic features of communications via space.”
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/communications-satellite-telstar/nasm_A20070113000
But then I see that the RCA history page says they launched one in 1958.
“ RCA's first satellite, called SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), was successfully launched into space, becoming the world's first communications satellite.”
https://www.rca.com/us_en/our-legacy-266-us-en
It looks like the RCA satellite only operated for 35 days. https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/communications-satellites. The original Telstar is apparently still in orbit, although no longer functional. It was the first used to transmit a TV signal.
Cheers everyone!
Can someone please explain the clue with The Answer “line one“?
Bravo to the commenters who mentioned Euler's fundamental equation involving pi. Euler (pronounced "oiler") is also credited with pioneering the use of the Greek letter pi for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. P for perimeter or perifery. The ancient Greeks knew that pi was constant but must of had a different name for it (which I don't know).
Oye Como Va....no BUENO...
The most fun of doing todays puzzle is reading @Rex's post about the WPA. Now THAT I didn't know and it was interesting.. I'll remember it.
The second fun was PURPLE PROSE: I found this little gem of an example...
"The mahogany-haired adolescent girl glanced fleetingly at her rugged paramour, a crystalline sparkle in her eyes as she gazed, enraptured, upon his countenance." Now we're talking.....!!! Another "Green Paint" story, please....!!! Some fun, smart, artsy person should make a puzzle centered around PURPLE PROSE...
Back to the puzzle. It was easy until it wasn't. No real crystalline sparkle in my eye. Nary an AAH nor an OHO to be found. I supposed I learned (and will forget) what Geocaching is, what a chiromancer reads, the name of Shawkat, what a SWAY BAR is and why, pray tell, is a BAD DREAM that might be centered around being unprepared for a test? Good gravy. A ton of head scratchers. At least I spelled the mathematician names correctly.
Dr SOAMI is waiting for me. See you hasta la vista...No BUENO.
ALES is part of the IPAS answer in that earlier clue and therefore legit.
Hi Nancy - I checked all Sunday NYT Pi days I could find and didn't come up with any rebus puzzles.
Years checked: 2021, 2010, 2004, 1999, 1993, 1982, 1976, 1971, 1965, and 1954.
I don't remember hearing about Pi day until my children were in school in the late 1980s so I didn't go further back. :-)
I don't like the NRA much either, but it's growing tedious to know that 3/4 of Rex's review is going to be blind vitriol whenever it appears. Even when clued as the government agency, we get at least a couple of sentences about how it reminds him of the other one. If the puzzle was centered around it, sure, fire away. But if it shows up as random fill, a simple "I'd rather they'd have found a way around that one" would more than suffice.
Doesn’t geocaching having answer gps violate a rule!?
@Nancy - I don't know if maybe you are thinking of March 27, 2014? It was a Thursday and not on Pi day, but it had a Pi rebus.
Or March 14, 2007 (a Wednesday?)
@Jill D -- Re: Joel Fagliano -- This is sad news, I feel, about the time frame of the recovery that Will Shortz is making from his stroke. I didn't notice the "Edited by" byline today -- and it's highly likely that I could have gone months without noticing it. I'm incredibly unobservant, visually speaking, and I also have a tendency to stop noticing just about everything after a while.
I hope it's not a bad sign that Will has had to relinquish the editing of the crossword and I hope it's merely temporary. I'm hoping that the doctors treating him are just insisting that he not over-exert himself and that he would be fully capable of editing the puzzle if only he felt up to it. I also wish that the course of his treatment and the progress he's making weren't shrouded in such secrecy. The puzzle community cares -- and the updates provided to the public have been pretty much non-existent.
The most noteworthy thing about this puzzle escaped me until a few commenters pointed it out today; it's the first one not edited by Will Shortz since 1993.
My first impression of the grid art [sic] was of a walrus. See those two iconic tusks hanging down from its mouth?
Not sure why there is a problem with "No BUENO". Yeah, it's not a complete sentence but neither is "No good". If you heard a non native English speaker say "No good", would you think that was somehow disrespectful of or insulting to English or English speaking people? Maybe living so long around bilingual folks who often mix and match Spanish and English has desensitized me to this sort of GRAY AREA.
What caught my attention in a more negative way was that the Spanish for "week", SEMANA was not up to the task of filling its grid slot. Neither was TAM. Both needed some short-cut grid fill help from a two for one POC (plural of convenience) to do their job..
@Nancy you might check October 11, 2020 for the slice you might enjoy revisiting.
Easy as Pi here as well
@kitshef, @Mike, @everybody -- I found it!!! I found it!!!
It was a Sunday and it was by Tom McCoy. Why do I keep forgetting when this is probably my favorite puzzle of all time?
Here's the link.
Without WII, there would be no WWII.
When he showed up for the NTH time at an astrophysics conference trying to sell yet another theory about black holes, the other attendees could be heard murmuring "What's STEPHENHAWKING now?". Even the famously sedate Leonhard EULER (derisively known as the Natural Log) whispered to his neighbor, "Hey ALBERTEINSTEIN or two of bier would get us through this presentation in relatively good shape."
Is 49D trying to tell me that St. Peter sat on his APSE?
This puzzle was a piece of cake!
I knew I could come here to commiserate! At first glance I knew we had another Thomas Edison (Sunday puzzle a month or so ago) on our ends - all style, no substance. I actually checked my phone to make sure today is a Thursday. Why toss the rules of a Thursday puzzle just to accommodate the minorest of minor holidays? Ughhh! And why Euler??? Because that was the only fill possible there? Then scrap your fill!
I'll admit, the Hawking and Einsten death day/birth day coincidence was fun to learn about. But that does not a puzzle theme make. Bunch of random pi-adjacent stuff thrown together.
I liked the puzzle WAY more than @Rex, but, as usual, I NEVER remember it’s Pi Day unless someone points it out, plus I hardly ever notice grid art unless it smacks me in the face. Like @kitshef, for some reason it took me more nanoseconds to get the W in SWAYBAR/WENT, but still pretty whooshy for Thursday.
@Peamut…used to be in offices the landline phones had more than one line, usually into an office. If a person’s receptionist intercommed you, they might say, “Ms/Mr Jones…Ms/Mr Smith for you on line 1. Jones pushes button marked 1. Ah…the olden days!
@Gill…seems like most people I know have a variant of the “bad dream” about school and I think these days “they” say it shows up often when one is “stressed out.” The one I have adds in the fact that, not only am I unprepared for the test, I realize I haven’t attended ANY of the classes! One bonus of retirement is that I’ve not had a dream like THAT for a while!
Hi Gang, Happy Pi Day!
Very easy going until I was crawling my way up 35D and was sure —DREAd was what the lack of preparation was causing. Stared at BAD DREAd forever until I realized I didn’t know my SEdANAS from my SEMANAS.
Surprised the PURPLE/Purplish dupe didn’t make it into @Rex’s pan.
Liked the theme, but thought the fill and the clueing both had weak AREAs. SOAMI looking at you, MPHADANTH? Even so, I’m in Camp “Thank God it’s PI DAY.” Sorry for those who didn’t get their Thursday fix.
Here’s something that ought to cheer anyone up, from another PI DAY birthday boy, Quincy Jones, 91 years young today. (Hope you like it, @Joe D!)
Quincy Jones & Orchestra, “Jazz pour tous” RTBF studio, Belgium, 1961 (colorized)
Best wishes for a speedy recovery for Will Shortz.
Same here, @Beezer. I used to have that recurring BAD DREAM all the time. I was taking a test when I hadn't attended a single class, I hadn't read a single assignment and I hadn't studied up the week before. I felt utter panic. Then, once I was no longer either going to school or working at a job, the dreams stopped completely. Just like that. Supposedly they're anxiety dreams brought about by a fear of failure -- whether the fear is legitimate or not. And as you say, they're pretty universal.
I found this fine but too easy for a Thursday puzzle. I came in over 10 minutes under my Thursday average, and only 20 seconds over my Thursday record. So meh. One of those puzzles that privileges the constructor over the solver.
Rex is cranky (again) today, I thought this was very cute. Though I do share his confusion at the clueing for "GRAY AREA" (and can never remember if it's GRAY or GREY).
Clearly, this puzzle is not in Rex's bailiwick; he's into literature, and apparently begrudges math people from having any fun 😅
As long as we're talking about numbers today ...
Pi is the most well-known irrational number but being irrational isn't why it's important. Square root of 2 is the first number found to be irrational (not the ratio of two integers like 22/7). When the Greeks learned that, it blew their minds. The classic proof that root two is irrational is often considered the most beautiful in all mathematics.
3/14 is also the anniversary of Karl Marx's death, which occurred in 1883. He thought the workers deserved not just a bigger slice of the pie, but the whole thing.
Wow, not expecting all this vitriol.
Lotta smarts in this puz: EINSTEIN. HAWKING. EULER. PLATO.
MAHER must like bein included in this company.
Shoot, anyone that can come up with e^i*pi = -1 is way, way outta M&A's league.
Cool thing: Hawke, ETHAN/HAWKING.
staff weeject pick: NTH. Most math-like of the runt words, today.
M&A prefers to think of March 14th as Pie Day. My math profs would no doubt approve.
Thanx for the Pie+e^i*pi puz, Mr. Martinovic dude. Nice puzgrid art.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
Non mathematician here who loves pi day and liked this puzzle. I did think it lacked the bite of the rebus Thursdays we used to anticipate (haven't we had a number o non-rebus Thursdays of late?) but there was a lot to like abut its nd Rex's riff "it's not a day at all..." just sounded petulant and petty.
I especially enjoyed the comment by Anonymous at 8:20
I did NOT find it Monday or Tuesday easy. Surprised by the comments that suggested it was.
I liked Rex's rant better than the puzzle, especially the comment about the plastic doohickie which keeps the pizza box from collapsing on your pizza. That alone brightened my Thursday; the puzzle (very easy) was a major disappointment.
Jeff Chen's note on XWord Info lists the other times Will Shortz has not been the editor. It's an interesting collection.
I never liked the idea of Pi Day anyway. Anyone who knows enough about math to care knows that Pi is not 3.14 but that, as an irrational number it goes on and on forever beginning 3.14159.... Pi Day is really just approximate Pi Day which, if you care about numbers, is kinda silly.
Pi Day was started at the wonderful Exploratorium in San Francisco by Frank Oppenheimer, its founder, physicist and brother of a better known Oppenheimer. This English major loves pi day (and so do most kids!).
Easiest Thursday puzzle I've ever encountered - usually I have a DNF... often don't get the idea at all. Not only experts share this blog!
On the other hand, for SB I had to stop at PG.
@AnoaBob, growing up speaking BritEng, I'd often hear native speakers saying "No good" after being asked a question like "How was your tennis game?"or "How was the movie?"
Euler's identity is a beautiful thing. But the most beautiful equation in math is how you calculate the volume of a pizza. If the radius of the pizza is z and the thickness is a, the volume is:
pi*z*z*a
BAD DREAd for me. Cost me 20 minutes of looking for errors.
My Spanish is NO BUENO
Yes, it was surprisingly easy for a Thursday, but I don't think it was nearly as bad as Rex made it out to be. Maybe he would've liked it a little more if he realized that the black-square picture in the center of the grid is the Greek letter that's also the symbol for pi.
I like pi day. I liked this puzzle. Nothing negative to say, for once. I like pie. EAT UP!
Easy. Obvious theme, no erasures, no WOEs, no problems.
Liked it more than @Rex did.
It was a bit unusually easy but I was delighted by the theme and cuteness of the puzzle. I like pi day and enjoyed this acknowledgement of it.
Euler does have a connection to Pi. It is in the Euler Identity, one of the most famous identities in mathmeatics. Here it is
e^(i*pi) - 1 = 0.
i = the square root of -1 and is an imaginary number.
Plato also has a connection to Pi as he is, maybe, the first to use sqrt(3) + sqrt(2) as an approximation of Pi.
Not a "little" too easy. Way too easy for a Thursday. No challenge at all. Boo.
@louis…. the identity is: e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0. That’s OK, but you never know if you’ll be on Jeopardy in the category “famous constants”…. It’s an amazing equation, because if you were to list the 5 most important numbers in Mathematics, here they all are, occurring exactly once in a single simple equation.
LIke others, I could not find my error at the crossing of “stay bar” and “tent”, for “sway bar” and “went”…. :-)
Crazy puzzle. Elegant with Stephen and Albert dropping down together. Love to learn new words from nytx like Geocaching or Chiromancer. But grimacing here at obscure (to me) team names. Knew WPA from years of teaching art history / public projects. What’s on YOUR post office walls?
I know that, but they served somewhat related purposes for different eras.
Record fast Thursday. No resistance whatsoever, extremely rare for me on a Thursday. Gotta agree with Rex on this one.
Follow-up for @Nancy:
I went back and (re-)solved the 3/8/2015 puzzle. It was better the second time around but I have another favorite. It's also a Sunday from early 2015.
January 25, 2015
I’m in the “loved it” camp. Pi Day makes me smile.
Another fun puzzle absolutely trashed by the perpetually negative Rex Parker
Yes. 3/4. Exactly how much he talked about it. I couldn’t believe it! Three quarters! I thought it was just a few sentences, but no, it was 3/4 of the write-up! Good eye. Thank god someone is standing up for the NRA. Brave work, anonymous commenter!
lol lots of people have fun with pi day. We had whole theme days around it going back to high school in the early 2000s. Not everything culturally relevant is a dated 1970s music reference.
Kind of a waste to clue ADA so badly. Ada Lovelace is another famous mathematician, pretty thematic.
Did anyone realize that pi is not an irrational number, but a transcendental number. A mathematician, much more knowledgeable than I can explain the difference.
I loved this one. (But I’m a noob at nytxw)
Jeff Chen is no longer involved with XWordInfo.... The note you are referring to is from the creator of the site Jim Horne.
In the old days of multiple lines to a desk or office, a person answering the phone might send an important incoming call to "line one," likely the boss's line: "Pat, there's an annoyed customer on line one."
'Twas easy as cake, a real piece of pie!
To @anonymous (11:15PM). Yes, "transcendental".... what would Thoreau or Emerson say... You can have your own personal relationship with numbers, without a professional mathematician as intermediary.... Actually, a transcendental number is simply a number that is not the root of any polynomial. e and pi are transcendental... It is fiendishly hard to prove numbers are transcendental... From Google: "The proof that pi is a transcendental number, first provided by Carl Louis Ferdinand von Lindemann in 1882, was and remains one of the most celebrated results of modern mathematics".
An irrational number is a number that is not expressible as a ratio of two integers. Pi is both irrational and transcendental. All transcendental numbers are also irrational, but not all irrational numbers are transcendental. The square root of 2 is irrational but not transcendental since it is the solution of x^2 = 2. The proof that the square root of 2 is irrational dates back to ancient times.
This was a fun puzzle to do, as the two long down guys are my heroes. What Either of them had to do with pi, I'm not sure, but it was cool to learn of their birth/death date.
I do believe that OFNP's overall view has been clouded by that one stupid filler. We all knew what was coming when we saw that--especially as clued. Strange that TSARISM earned nary a mention; that was as nasty as the NRA, one would think.
Pleased to award ALIA Shawkat her first DOD.
I do have one criticism: this was too easy for a Thursday. I know, the date and everything, but...should've been backed up to Wednesday, at least. Par.
Wordle par.
Any puzzle with Plato, Euler, Einstein, and Hawking is aces with me!
Pi(e) is on me!
The CANES messed up my grid - like a big windy storm.
But I guess the rest was easy as cake. Cake, right? Ohhhhhhhhh - the Life of PI!
Diana, LIW
ALISTER ALONE
He played HOOPS, did EINSTEIN,
A TOWER with no SWAY,
SO OPEN at THE THREE point LINE,
he'll EAT you UP ONE DAY.
--- DR. ETHAN MAHER
Puzzle should have been reserved for a year when March 14 falls on a Monday or Tuesday. Way too easy for a Thursday. That said, was still interesting for the Einstein and Hawking trivia which fall into the same category as JFK, Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis all dying on Nov. 22, 1963 and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both dying on July 4, 1826.
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