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Novel parodied by Umberto Eco's "Granita" / THU 4-25-24 / City in the Pacific Northwest with a Russian-sounding name / Spider-Man adversary played by Jamie Foxx / Plant with lance-shaped leaves / Longtime judge on "Britain's Got Talent" and "America's Got Talent"/ Something checkered in New York's past? / Detroit ___, nickname for Malcolm X / Powerful card in the game President
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Constructor: Hanh Huynh
Relative difficulty: Easy (after you get the trick)
The "hole"-y COWs:
- SC O WL (14A: Dirty look)
- SIMON C O WELL (21A: Longtime judge on "Britain's Got Talent" and "America's Got Talent")
- MOSC O W, IDAHO (46A: City in the Pacific Northwest with a Russian-sounding name)
The "hole"-y crosses (!):
Word of the Day: MOSCOW, IDAHO (46A) —
- CHOLER (3D: Ire)
- WHOLE NUMBERS (4D: 1, 2, 3, etc.)
- PEEP HOLES (7D: Low-tech security measures on some doors)
- CORNHOLE (9D: Popular backyard game)
- HOLES OUT (47D: Sinks the putt)
- WHOLESALE (44D: Not retail)
Moscow (/ˈmɒskoʊ/ MOSS-koh) is a city and the county seat of Latah County, Idaho. Located in the North Central region of the state along the border with Washington, it had a population of 25,435 at the 2020 census. Moscow is the home of the University of Idaho, the state's land-grant institution and primary research university.It is the principal city in the Moscow, Idaho Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Latah County. The city contains over 60% of the county's population, and while the university is Moscow's dominant employer, the city also serves as an agricultural and commercial hub for the Palouse region.
Along with the rest of the Idaho Panhandle, Moscow is in the Pacific Time Zone. The elevation of its city center is 2,579 feet (786 m) above sea level. Two major highways serve the city, passing through the city center: US-95 (north-south) and ID-8 (east-west). The Pullman–Moscow Regional Airport, four miles (6 km) west, provides limited commercial air service. The local newspaper is the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. (wikipedia)
• • •
- 42D: Like like like this clue clue clue ... (ECHOEY)
- 37D: Something checkered in New York's past? (TAXI)
- 44A: Wicked stuff? (WAX) (think candles)
OK that first one doesn't actually have a "?" in it, but you see what I mean—it tries to get cute ... and absolutely pulls it off. It's hard enough for the puzzle to get one of those wacky "?"-type clues to land most days, so three!? Right on the heels of a perfect reveal!? My lucky day. If this isn't one of my April "Puzzles of the Month," well, that means we're going to have some amazing puzzles in the next week, because right now this is my favorite themed puzzle of the month by a pretty decent margin (with Kwong's "A STAR IS 'B' OR 'N'" puzzle from last Thursday a worthy runner-up).
The hardest part was getting started, which, as I've said many times, is typical, especially with a tricky gimmick to SUSS out. 1A: Snap was probably the hardest answer in the whole (!) puzzle for me. I had JIF. Then wanted SEC. Then put Las Vegas on Mountain Time (MST) and tried MIN. Strike three. But I wasn't out! At some point the P from PST (Las Vegas's actual time zone) got me PIC ("gah, a camera snap!"), but the circled squares were still a mystery. From THRONES I was able to get enough of the puzzle to see NUMBERS, which allowed me to infer the "HOLE" (for WHOLE NUMBERS), which (finally) allowed me to see CHOLER! That's some olde-timey ire right there! You rarely see CHOLER outside older literature and vocabulary tests (thanks, Mr. Berglund!). So, a little work to HOE out those "HOLE"s (in "SCOWL"), and then a tentative "HOLE"-ing out of the "HOLE"s in SIMON COWELL, and when those "HOLE"s worked, I knew the remaining circled squares would also be "HOLE"s and the grid opened right up. What had been a medium-tough puzzle all of a sudden became quite easy, and I got some of that Whoosh feeling I usually look forward to on Fridays, sailing through SADDLES and SIMON COWELL, and ELECTRO and LOLITA, to end up in MOSCOW, IDAHO, where I have been before—my mom grew up in St. Maries, ID (also in the Idaho Panhandle) and at least one of her two sisters (my aunts) (obviously) went to college in Moscow (at the U. of Idaho). My aunt Nancy lived for a time in Lewiston, ID, which is only 30 miles or so south of Moscow. This is all to say that seeing MOSCOW, IDAHO in the puzzle made me happy in a way it is unlikely to have made most of you happy. You don't see the Idaho panhandle in puzzles much—Coeur d'ALENE sometimes, maybe—so it was delightful to see it brought into the thematic spotlight here. Despite not having spent a lot of time there, it's a part of the world I feel close to and am very fond of.
Were there trouble spots? After getting the first HOLEs, not a lot. I hit the laptop brand (28D: Laptop brand) with only the "L" in place and had this flash of "&$^%, how should I know?" but then not more than a second or two later my brain was like "easy, buddy, you know this, it's LENOVO." Me: "Wait, how do I know that? I've never seen a LENOVO laptop in my life." Brain: "Who knows what you know? It's a mess in here, frankly. Just keep going!" I did not know (or forgot) that Malcolm X was ever nicknamed Detroit RED, but the rest of that NE corner was so easy that it hardly mattered (13D: Detroit ___, nickname for Malcolm X). I didn't really know the Spider-Man adversary in question, but I could infer ELECTRO pretty well after the first few letters (I like it—it's got good ... energy) (24D: Spider-Man adversary played by Jamie Foxx). I've got Carmen MCRAE on WAX in my house, so no trouble there (45A: Jazz singer Carmen). Only DETOO and LESSEE made me scowl (!) today. Otherwise, this was close to an ideal Thursday experience. Could've been a little tougher, but it's hard to complain about the difficulty level with a puzzle that sticks the landing like this. I have wondered aloud "Where have the delightful puzzles gone!?" Well—found one. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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108 comments:
Loved it! Especially after yesterday’s ABYSM disaster.
I got the [HOLE] idea early on, while I was still in the Northern reaches. I had already guessed that the circled letters would be blank in the acrosses from SC_O_WL at 14A. I got the rebus [HOLE] from CORN[HOLE] at 9D, filled in all the rebodes and was off to the races.
Not a lot of overwrites, just ill before WOE at 4A, roC before ORC at 40D and ECHOEd before ECHOEY at 42D. I guess ECHOEY is a word but it's ugly.
28D was a gimme because I was doing the puzzle on a LENOVO laptop.
It would have been fun to leave the “hole”s empty but in the app you need to rebus them in.
https://downforacross.com/beta/replay/5147418-zint
I figured out pretty quickly that the Across answers skipped the circles... but it took me an embarrassingly long time to see what was going on in the Downs. Even with W_NUMBERS in place. I guess I was expecting some tricky gimmick that the revealer would explain, instead of just a marked rebus on a Thursday. The moment you see me type in CORN is when I realized that the circles were HOLEs, I went back to fill them all in at the end.
I had ECHOEd, and HOLDsomething seemed to make sense. You can see me flailing around with random abbreviations at 57D to see what sticks (I didn't even know MCI, and as a non-American I mix up abbreviations alllll the time). Getting HOLYCOW and realizing that all the holes were in the word COW was a really nice aha moment.
The NYT crossword app made me fill in the HOLEs with a rebus.
The way I get my puzzles online Monday-Saturday (then go directly to print because I'm very old and hate solving online)I NEVER see a theme named. I give myself extra points for successfully doing puzzles without the hint provided by a theme. Good old me.
I agree with Rex on this one. Fun theme and great reveal, with some clever clues - the ones Rex mentioned plus “where peas are queued” for POD. I an especially delighted at clever clues for run-of-the-mill answers. WAX is obviously another one of those. I had heX first, then poX. After getting the theme and putting in WHOLESALE, I OOHED and AHHed over the wicked misdirection.
I messed up big time to start in the NW. my “misfortune” was an ILL, which led to laS for the La La Land clue. I thought “1, 2, 3, etc.” was integers, skipping over the circle with its meaning to be revealed later. But nothing else in that corner was working, so I moved on. I got the HOLEs with PEEPHOLES and CORNHOLE and then everything fell pretty quickly, including fixing the NW.
Nice Friday.
I need help. Do I put Hs in the round circle squares? I have all the right answers but can’t solve the puzzle!
What does that entail? Do you put Hs in? For me leaving it blank or putting Hs in doesn’t seem to work.
Enjoyable puzzle, but I was taken aback by @RP’s ecstatic review. I guess MOSCOW IDAHO really put him in a good mood.
One minor criticism: Whole numbers include 0. The sequence 1, 2, 3… is technically the natural numbers. The distinction recognizes the importance of the advent of the concept of 0 to the evolution of mathematics.
webwinger
I am having a problem solving this puzzle. I have all the right answers but it’s not solved. What letter should be put in the hole?
I thought it was a touch more elegant with the circles left blank, but it works as a rebus as well. Nice rebound from yesterday’s disaster.
The one trouble spot for me was the ELECTRO/MCRAE/Umberto Eco section - but of course I always struggle wherever it has a high concentration of PPP.
Probably the most glowing review that Rex has given in over a year (certainly in recent memory) - that’s a real accomplishment, so congrats to the constructor as well.
Much better puzzle than yesterday's disaster. Was kinda easy once you figured out the COWS and the HOLES and everything in between. I caught on early thank God.
Finally, a nice Thursday rebus! Loved the theme, lots of fun.
Agree on all counts, best puzzle in a while. Rex's write up a so positive I thought it must be a guest author today until I saw the byline!
Very hard to get started. After PACE CAR/ETA/CIG, I could not get anything else 'til way down at AAS.
Also very hard to finish, where PIC simply would not come to me, and I was not sure of the time zone for Vegas, and I know very, very little German.
In between, it was not so tough with my only overwrites LESSor to LESSEE (not sure what I was thinking there) and ECHOEd to the abyssal ECHOEY.
From ABYSM to (HOLE) lol
Yes, most fun solve in a while. The reveal was great, and led me to notice the COWS.
I wish the app would treat renuses consistently. At first I was leaving the HOLEs blank, but then thought no, I better put something in there so just did the H. The first letter used to be enough, but when I finished I didn’t get the happy music until I went back and wrote in the whole word.
For those who asked what to put in the holes, it is the rebus HOLE
Tap “More” on the lower left side, then tap “Rebus” and type in HOLE.
You enter a rebus of the entire word “HOLE” in the circles
You have to enter them as a rebus - put the entire word “HOLE” in the circled squares
Click the "rebus" button and then put the entire word "hole" in each circled square
Another tech tragedy—this great puzzle being overshadowed by a tech issue: people not sure how to fill the grid “correctly”. The app/website should accept HOLE *or* H *or* nothing at all—all the things one might reasonably expect to go in those circled spaces. Insane that for all their investment in gamification they somehow cannot get this right
A few people have asked, so here’s how you complete the puzzle. You need to create a rebus, which is crossword speak for putting multiple letters in a single square. On the iPhone at least there is a “more” option on the keyboard that gives you numbers, symbols, etc. In the “more” keyboard there is a REBUS button. Click that and you can type a word in the square.
Like other solvers I left the hole squares empty and hoped the puzzle software would accept it, but no dice. Too bad, because it was a cute fun theme
I think the software could be improved by allowing a user to self-select a difficulty level. This puzzle would be more challenging without the circled squares. Here for long time solvers it’s apparent pretty quickly that you skip over the circled squares in the acrosses, so we are only left wondering what to do with them in the downs. I think this is GREAT for newer solvers. But if you wanted more of a challenge and didn’t have circled squares, it becomes much harder to figure out what is going on with those across themers… or potentially even which answers are theme answers.
Same puzzle, same grid, just an on/off feature for the hint of circled squares.
This was a before-and-after puzzle for me. Before SUSSing the theme there was the fight for fill-in that both frustrated and delighted my brain. Post-SUSS, there was the sledding downhill thrill of the splat-fill, with “Hah!” after “Hah!” after “Hah!” Where inscrutable clues became suddenly obvious. A beast of an experience.
Today, there was so much beauty in the box.
Beauty in theme, capped by uncovering the reveal and, with an OMG, realizing that the circles were in COWS.
Beauty in answer – PACECAR, HEDGED IN, PHENOM, DISMANTLE. – all set in a clean hardly-a-whiff-of-junk grid.
Beauty in playful clues, such as [Where peas are queued] and [Like like like this clue clue clue … ].
And beauty in serendipities. Three involving backward answers: OUT (of HOLES OUT) and a backward OWT, a backward ONE to go with TWO, and a backward ATE next to CORN. In addition, two Boggle-style HOLEs echoed the theme, one beginning with the H in HOE, and the other starting with the HOL of the revealer.
So, a beauty and the beast puzzle. My heart has been charmed and my spirits stoked. Two puzzles into the Times, Hanh, and I’m a huge fan, hungry for more. Thank you for a splendid solve!
BTW, feel like you’ve seen this theme before? Well, there was an echo of it on a Sunday late January, the WACAMOLE puzzle, which had five rebus circles representing the word HOLE across and down. But they were representing Wacamole holes, nothing like today’s HOLY COW.
I do it pen on paper and I wrote a tiny HOLE in each of the circles, but it's more elegant to leave them blank and to consider the circles to be pictures of holes. That's the original idea behind a rebus. A picture representing a word.
Loved the puzzle to death. I'm pretty sure Nancy will put it into the running for Puzzle of the Year.
Yes, the clue for 4D should have had 0, 1, 2, 3 ...
Some nice word play, especially WAX for "Wicked stuff?"
Easy. Got the theme right away in the NW. agree it was fun and breezy.
Had it all but didn't feel like rebusing in HOLE a bunch of times so just hit reveal, in the reveal on the app they are just blank (with a little red dot in the upper corner, weird), they don't fill in a HOLE rebus for each one... but leaving them blank certainly wasn't bringing happy music.
PSA don't pronounce Moscow, Idaho ("Mos-coe") the same way you pronounce Moscow, Russia ("Mos-cow").
Or the “hole” word ;)
On the app, you press more on the keyboard, and then the rebus button. That will let you enter more than one letter in a square. Put the word “hole” all in one space. Good luck!
Yep, what a lot of fun. Caught on at CORN___ and mentally filled in all the holes, so that made much of the puzzle easy. Didn't know that about LOLITA but easy crosses, and I hadn't thought of Malcom X as Detroit RED since I read his autobiography almost sixty years ago and was delighted that I could remember that. Yay me.
ECHOED for ECHOEY, which slowed me down, and the version ending in Y still does not look like a word to me. Finally fixed it by finding all the COWS, which led to the delightful aha! that many of us experienced.
A fast time in the Mini today and got to pg in the SB in jig time so smiles all around. Now I have extra time to proceed with all the unpacking, which is taking forever. My advice still holds--don't ever move.
Great one, HH. May I award you my Highest Honor, the Thursdazo! prize. Thanks for the best puzz in some time.
Wow that was fun. The puzzle was about half done and stalled when I finally figured out the HOLE rebus, then it was zip zip zip. But I was baffled by the revealer, and COW seemed totally random and out of sync with the puzzle. Till Rex explained it. Of course, the C O W s in those answers. Duh! My bad, but a very nifty puzzle and Rex is fun when he’s happy!
looks like i'm the only one that groaned at this puzzle. ah well, to each their own.
HOLY COW! This felt like a scene from a horror movie when everyone is sitting at the kitchen table of a ramshackle farm house and the room is wreaking of angst, ill feelings, intrigue, and ennui as each character's backstory and desires have become problematic plot points, when suddenly the door flies open and a blonde woman in her early twenties in a tank top stumbles into the scene covered in blood yelling, "He's in the chicken coop! With a chainsaw! Don't go out there." As bad as things are in here, you know things are much much worse out there.
This puzzle was going to feel like a safe room after yesterday's slasher flick.
I think the revealer was sooo cute.
Moscow, Idaho is pretty close to Maui, North Dakota.
Weirdly awkwardisms: HEDGED IN. END. I thought the tiniest bit was ATAD not ONE IOTA? IDO? WAS. CAWS.
Propers: 8
Places: 2
Products: 4
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 (32%)
Tee-Hee: Good and hot? PLAN B. Ehem. And, what your love of spicy food creates. ENRAGED THRONES.
Uniclues:
1 When the CERN Large Hadron Collider tries to isolate a tad.
2 Sudden understanding why your backseat indiscretions are now on YouTube.
3 Bag the bags.
1 ONE IOTA ATTEMPT
2 AHH! TAXI PEEPHOLES.
3 DISMANTLE CORNHOLE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Knightley getting grumbly. KEIRA NITS RISE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hated this puzzle.
Lots of short fill. Lots of stuff I thought was just dumb. Shocked that you liked it, Rex; I am usually less cHOLEric than you.
A better choice for today's musical link might have been The Vandals, "My Girlfriend's Dead."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjFPxrDWpUM
Hey All !
I've seen pictures of COWS with HOLEs in them. Quite bizzarre, something about their digestive system. As for the expression HOLY COW, that fits much better.
I ended up getting the SW corner first, ergo, the Revealer presented itself, waving "Here I am!" Knowing SIMON COWELL, was wondering why it didn't fit, so after getting the Revealer, saw to put "holes" twixt the COW. Ha! Says I. Pretty neat. Then I wondered what would be in the Downs. Found the "HOLE"s and let out another Ha! HOLE-y COWs! HOLY COW!
Promptly looked to see if all the circles were HOLEs, and yes they were. Then, when done, the App erased my Rebussed HOLEs, and the squares were blank. Ha! HOLEs!
I think the EDSEL was technically cancelled in 59, but there are 1960 models, with normal looking fronts, not that big long oval grille rhingie.
Anyway, Happy Thursday.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I had to check the end of the review to see who wrote it. Couldn't be Rex Parker, it was too giddy. But it was! Makes me happy to see Rex happy (finally).
I got the HOLE trick quickly but confess I didn’t understand the revealer until I read Rex (ohhhh, HOLE-y COW, I get it *groan*), although in my (weak) defense I didn’t dwell after completing the puzzle and getting the app’s cheery melodic congrats — dah-dee-dah-dee-dah, dah-DAH! But a fun and easy grid, a worthy Thursday.
Probably my favorite Thursday ever. I’m normally not a Thursday fan, but the revealer gave me the “aha” I always want, and the rebuses were clever. Fun and cute!
I put in Os for the holes... but didn't get the "puzz complete" screen... so spent a few min looking for errors... finally took out the Os so the circles were blank... bingo.
Got the trick pretty early at W(hole)NUMBERS.
Familiar nit: I think of AHH as what the dentist asks you to say and AAH as the answer to 56D, but I know puzzle editors don't agree so I always check crosses.
Finally a good bit of Thursday trickery!
I liked this puzzle. Mostly for all the things @Rex mentioned, and similarly PIC at 1a was my bugaboo until it wasn’t, after finally committing to the P (“stop flip/flopping on M, you know it’s Pacific, idiot.”)
Do agree on abundance of 3s, but honestly didn’t read half of them, cause rest filled in by their longer crosses.
I love Idaho, we vacation there a fair amount, typically Sun Valley for fly fishing and skiing, but I’m afraid they’ll be quite a few solvers that only know or heard of Moscow, Idaho from the senseless tragic event.
PUZZLE OF THE YEAR
HOLD COW????? What on earth?
So I thought I'd figured out the whole HOLE thing at SCOWL. But, as it turned out, I'd only figured out half the HOLE thing because I hadn't noticed the HOLE-Y C-O-W.
What came in first, because I had ECHOED at 43D (and btw, didn't all of you too?) was HOLD COW and I thought I was losing my everloving mind. A minute or two went by before I figured it out. ECHOEY? I said to myself. ECHOEY??? Surely, you're kidding me, right?
But when I noticed for the first time all the interrupted COWS in the theme answers, I had to give it my full respect. "This is pretty darned clever," I thought.
I might have put it into my running list for POY if it weren't for ECHOEY. It seems like a glaring weakness. Also, there's a lot of not-so-great three-letter fill. But still I found it an entertaining and surprising solve with not just one but two big "Aha Moments". First the HOLE moment. And then the COW moment. Very nice Thursday.
I am very VERY old and also print them out. If I didn't read this blog I'd never know they have themes. I'm sure it's good for our ancient brains to add another tiny layer of difficulty.
Oh no, oh WOE is me, said I - another theme that has to be explained. Then I SUSSed OUT the unadvertised WH[HOLE]SALE at 44D and WAS ever so relieved to see a nice normal Thursday rebus. I looked around the grid and realized I could fill in those circles till the COWs came home and they did, every single ONE of them. Thanks Hahn, for a very enjoyable puzzle. How nice to say AHH instead of #@%$>?! for a change.
This puzzle made me realize there is a SCOWL hidden in SIMON COWELL’s name. Pretty sure the only time I ever really noticed him was when Susan Boyle made her debut on the British show, and he seemed to do a lot of that during her intro. Of course he quickly changed his attitude when she started to sing. Everyone did.
I thought the partial dupe of w hole numbers and w hole sale should have been avoided. Also a shame that it did not make a connection to Harry Caray either by including him in the puzzle or publishing it in a date connected to him
Guac(HOLE)amo(HOLE)le, it took me until well into the first themer to figure out the whole schtik of this puzzle. Sh(HOLE)i(HOLE)t, I gasped! It's a Phil Rizutto tribute puzzle. Can't wait to see what Scooter-bilia we'll see here. Turned out to be just another punctured bovine grid.
It was, I must say, appropriate to see Putin's Useful Idiots in IDAHO paired up with his MOSCOW capitol.
Aren't WHOLENUMBERS what they give you before a colonoscopy? Asking for a friend.
Another weird concept. It would have been better to diversify away from just the COW thing. Butt on the HOLE, I liked it. Thanks, Hanh Huynh.
Awesome! I got the HOLE idea early, as my entry into the grid was through PACE CAR x CORN [hole], but I didn't notice the three COWs until the reveal. Which got a laugh of delight. While solving, I'd wondered about the holes seemingly playing no role in the Across answers: wasn't that some sort of constructing flaw? Such a treat to be proved wrong!
Do-over: DISmember (horrors, I was so shocked that it would be in the grid; thank goodness it wasn't) before DISMANTLE. No idea: FANDUEL, ELECTRO.
For anyone else who might be curious about Umberto Eco's "Granita," you can read it here.
Well.....I'm not as enthusiastically wowed by this puzzle as @Rex is, I'm more of an EGADS, why is AMNIO performed by an OB type of gal.
I got the HOLE and the COW thing early. It just so happened to be SIMONC -O-WELL...But wait! Where does that hole thing go?...AHA..look at the PEEP HOLES coming down to meet up with the theme. OK, this might just be fun...or not.
The fun part was the theme. The not so fun was all of the damn three letter clues and answers. PIC PST ICH to start me off. UGH. A mistake that still sits at 7A? I happily wrote in PACK CAT. I have absolutely no idea why. On to the rest....
ELECTRO? Are you a PHENOM? LENOVO belongs in the PIC slot. Never heard of these. Impossible to SUSS out. Cheat. I also cheated at FANDUEL. Some of this is Saturday hard. I forgive myself because the HOLY COW reveal made me smile. I suppose one smile is good enough for what I considered a fairly hard puzzle surrounding the easy reveal. I don't even understand myself any more.
Never heard of a workout class called 'SPIN' Sounds like it would make you dizzy. It crosses some purportedly popular game that at one point I threw down as 'CrapHOLE'. And that was in Rex's favorite part of the puzzle?
This puzzle was too easy
More garbage. I'm sorry, at first we are squeezing multiple letters into squares, and now we leave them blank??? Please stop abusing the idea of a crossword if you're not going to follow the rules. One. Letter. Per. Square. Period, end of story. Anything else is just cheating. I'm getting really sick of the cutesy tricks and weird clues. Further, I think I would prefer the custom of numbering the words in each answer. I know, I'm being old-fashioned, but please. What next?
You can leave the holes empty, Anon 6:55am.
Anon 6:55am, never mind! I entered HOLE as a rebus for each circled square but after the puzzle jingles you through, it displays the holes as empty. Confusing.
Nice to see LOLITA at 25D. It was Nabokov's birthday this week (1899).
In 1963, he said in an interview: I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
@Whatsername (10:12) -- Nice pickup on the SCOWL in SIMON COWELL's name.
My first (and only) encounter with SIMON was also during the Susan Boyle episode. Susan's amazing debut had been splashed all over the news and the internet -- to the point that even I had become aware of it. Either some TV news program fed me the clip or I went searching for it online myself.
Susan was amazing. Incredible voice and one of my favorite songs of all time. Like you, @Whatsername, I noticed the smirk -- more of a smirk than a scowl, I think -- on SIMON's face slowly change to surprise and then to very belated admiration. "What an obnoxious, supercilious jerk," I thought. SIMON, not Susan. I never watched him or his program again.
@PeggyS - Monday-Saturday puzzles do not have theme names. The theme name in Rex's column is one he makes up himself after solving the puzzle. So fear not, you are not being deprived of useful info.
“Holy cow” will always make me think of the beloved Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto. Loved seeing it a week after the retirement of another beloved announcer, John Sterling. “It is high, it is far, it is g-o-o-o-ne!”
ECHOEY?!? ECHOEY?!? HOLE-Y COW-EY
As Rex says, "Go large or go home."
Minor nit--one of those rebus puzzles in which, once you get the first two rebus answers, you know that all 6 circles can be filled in as HOLE.
But a fun puzzle!
Hand up for loving the puzzle and agree that once you figure out the conceit, it played easy!
Today I learned that Idaho is considered the Pacific Northwest…unless it’s NOT. I searched Pacific Northwest and found out that I’m not alone in my ignorance because it can be considered different depending on who you talk to. Sometimes it extends south to include Northern California, some take it as far north as Juneau, Alaska and some will take it as far east as to include a small part of Montana. My “idea” of it before today didn’t even include the eastern part of Washington past the mountains.
Got the “Cow” quite quickly, but I had almost finished the puzzle before I got the “Hole” bit slowed down I’m sure by the fact that I had “Is Out” and “On sale” running through Moscow, Idaho and was looking for something about being “In Cow”. The revealed tipped me off, and helped me finish out the puzzle, where those holes had really held me up (a 3 letter word for Ire? A two letter word starting with W to describe numbers?) so I got the whoosh at the end, the revealer really did reveal, and the puzzle felt suitably challenging for a Thursday without feeling like a slog. I do love a rebus and think more constructors should use them. They’re usually so satisfying to figure out.
OK, egs, I'll bite (on Scooter). He was watching a very slow runner plodding his way from first to third. Rizzuto's comment was "He certainly spends a lot of time running in the same spot."
His "Holy Cow" was noted in the very first sentence of his obit in the NYT. When the Yankees retired his number (10) and honored him with a "day," they presented him with a cow as a gift. It stepped on his foot and knocked him over.
He met his beloved bride Cora at a breakfast event where he spoke, replacing DiMaggio. He was invited by her dad back to their house in Newark. Rizzuto said he fell in love so deeply that he couldn't go home. He rented a hotel room nearby for a month so he could be near her.
Agree 100% with Epicurus 10:51 am. A crossword puzzle should be a cross WORD puzzle.
I'm still recovering from yesterday's Abysm, and therefore can't enjoy today. I spent 2 hours and 15 minutes checking a puzzle that took 15 minutes to complete before I gave up and blew my 268 day streak. And then the blow to my pride, losing my streak on a Wednesday?
I’m not great at rebus days, but I got it after a little head-scratching.
That said, wasn’t Will Shortz always sure to indicate the answer would be truncated? Cig is abbreviation and should be noted as such. There were a few others.
I also don’t agree with using ooh and aah in the same puzzle. Seems lazy. Maybe I’m just a cynic.
I liked @Lewis’s description of this puzzle as “beauty and beast” tho I would put the “beast” first. Took forever it seemed to get the HOLE theme, then went fast. Had some difficulty getting ELECTRO because I initially put in ELECTRA, phonetically confusing one super villain for another super villain/hero. Also struggled with some of the PPP, but that’s easy to guess or look up, so found this puzzle fun to solve. Appreciated @Rex’s emotional response, same happens to me when familiar areas are highlighted.
Thank you. First time rebus user!
No, @Anonymous 8:36 - I groaned too. (maybe it's just the two of us). But then I'm not a fan of rebus puzzles, no matter how ingenious. That's my excuse.
I posted a rave early, expecting most of us to follow suit. Didn't happen. I never considered myself to be a typical member of this playground, but not this different.
For anyone who might have a passing interest in this sort of thing, there is no COW in Moscow, Russia. The correct pronunciation is "MOS-koh" (with the stress on the first syllable). Listen for example to the English broadcast of “Russia Today” and you will hear things like “It’s 15 degrees and overcast in "MOS-koh" today”.
you must have a mistake. you need not enter anything in the holes. lenov'a' ? maybe
DECOMPOSE>DISMEMBER>DISMANTLE: Must be watching too much grim TV- the fantastic RIPLEY on Netflix to be precise, with its amazing black & white.
Easy-medium. About a quarter of the way into this I found myself in the SE where I ran across the reveal. It was cake after that.
Fun Thursday! Nice to enjoy a puzzle after the last couple of days. Liked it a bunch!
Did not know ELECTRO as comic book movies are not part of my must see lists.
Also did not know RED.
ECHOEY???
ECHOEY is a great word, almost onomatopoetic!
Sound engineers and such use it a lot.
@Chase CIG is slang, not an abbreviation that should be followed with a period. It's in Merriam-Webster as such.
Pretty much what @RP said. Great puztheme & reveal. Fairly easy solvequest, for a ThursPuz.
staff weeject pick: C+[hole]+R. Feistiest runt-word-with growth-potential of the 31 choices.
honrable mention to the WAX clue. Nice 3- and 4- stacks, in all 4 corners, btw.
fave thing: ECHOEY. Cool debut bit of Ow de Speration.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Huynh dude. Primo job.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
This was fun, once I figured it out. Hard to believe that one little answer kept me from seeing it sooner. 6D was LAS because LA LA LAnd. So 4A was "ill" and it was impossible to get anything going down from that. So a trip to the bottom and the revealer was required.
The closest to IDAHO I've been is Spokane, WA. Only 35 miles away but I couldn't pull off getting to Coeur d'Alene, rats.
I know we just saw IDA Tarbell in a recent puzzle but I've already forgotten and I thought a good name for sports betting was FAN fUEL. I didn't think IfA was a good name but didn't over-think it, I guess. So DNF.
Thanks, Hanh Huynh, nice puzzle!
I also thought this was a very clever theme and a spot on reveal. The three Across and six Down themers did not leave me OOHING over fill quality but there wasn't anything to become ENRAGED about. Well, maybe ECHOEY. There's a reason it's a debut in the NYTXW. Oh, and I've heard HEMMED IN but never HEDGED IN.
I subscribe to the NYT puzzle and do the puzzle on their web page. I just left the HOLEs empty--I mean isn't that what a HOLE is, the absence of anything---and got the "Congratulations", successful solve message.
I don't get all EMOTIVE about it but I think if one wants to use a Latin word to gussy up a simple minded device like putting multiple letters in single grid squares, the go to choice would be litteris, "with or by way of letters". Or maybe when they spell a word like today, then verbis, "with or by way of words". Leave rebus for use according to its Latin definition of "with or by way of things" and, especially, how it is used by language scholars in the Rebus Principle.
I'll never like these little circles. But it's a Thursday CrossGame, so...
Yet I did enjoy it - but clearly not as much as Rex and others here did.
Didn't like OOHING at all, or PHENOM(enon! Clue it as Little prodigy), or ECHOEY.
The numbers listed are both whole and natural numbers. So it's not incorrect. But as a former math teacher I used to say "The whole numbers are just the natural numbers with a hole added: 0."
I guess I am the dummy here. Can someone please explain the WAX clue?
Didn’t find this all that challenging. Didn’t find it all that entertaining either 🤷♀️ I was surprised Rex liked it. Especially because I seem to remember a puzzle recently using a similar trick.
SouthsideJohnny giving foreign place name pronunciation tips???? Rex loves 2 Thursdays in a row? What’s up here?
btw - Russians say moskvah. Otherwise, British pronunciation not inherently more correct than the American one.
Do you pronounce Paris as pa-hhREE in English too?
What a fun puzzle. Still dope-slapping myself as I wrote in "cah" instead of "caw" for the crow sound - and so didn't see Moscow for the longest time. And I lived in Moscow for five years! I guess over-familiarity drained out the Russian-name connection. Anyway, it's a lovely place; or used to be.
I'm sorry to have missed a puzzle everyone else seemed to like. But it wasn't my fault. A new company, Arkadium, took over the handling of online NYT puzzles. They apparently decided I wasn't eligible, even though I've been a subscriber to the paper for decades and have always been eligible.
I complained to them, and they said they'd get back to me.. That was 8 hours ago. I complained to the NYT, and the woman I spoke with referred me to Google Chrome (???). At least I think that's what she said, i'm not sure because she had a very heavy accent.
Pretty decent Thursday! It took me a while to figure out the gimmick, so I just left blanks in the circles until finally one of the downs was obvious.
I had an objection to the clue for HOLES OUT. I watch a fair bit of golf, and about 99% of the time they use that term to describe a chip or drive shot from off the green which goes in the hole, not a putt. But online dictionaries disagree, so whatever!
Sometimes I really wonder what goes through their heads when they're writing the clues. The clue for RED is just crazily contrived... not that it's bad, as long as they don't overdo it. Learned something, anyway.
[Spelling Bee: Wed 0; streak 17.]
I too print it out. Never worry about time or rebuses or anything else. When I'm done, I'm done.
And BTW, the goddess Carmen McRae is worth the wax.
Ditto. Uncover dirt = HOE. Nope. (mixing, tilling, cultivating, loosening)
HEDGED IN. Not common usage.
ECHOEY. Word list.
AHH. Not AAH?
OOHING. Word list.
END. There are two ends to a cigarette, a lit one and a filter one.
Along with other examples of clues that could mean any number of things.
All in all very "word-listy" (yes, I made that up).
@anon 1:36pm…as in CANDLE wicks…
Why don’t you read the blog before you ask your questions?
I noticed the HOLE rebus right away; it took a bit longer so see that they were empty holed in the acrosses. I marked the rebus squares by drawing a big circle in each one, and eventually noticed that I seemed to have SCOOOWL, etc. But I needed the revealer before I became aware of the SOWs. Very impressive.
On ECHOEY, my first reaction was like @Nancy's, but it grew on me. My thinking is that I can imagine saying "it's really echoey in here," and if I'm going to say it there must be a way to spell it, and 'echoy' really wouldn't work. So I think it's OK.
OTOH, my concept of the Pacific Northwest is that it's on the Pacific, and Idaho is not. States get to choose their own time zones, so Nevada can be PST if it wants to (I finished with an error because of that--never noticed mIC), but not their region. So there.
The EDSEL(S) was made by the Ford Motor Company, but it was not a Ford, any more than a Mercury or a Lincoln was a Ford. That error shocked me.
@SouthsideJohnny @12:38 and others. On a trip to Russia, we were told by the guide that there is no "cow" in Moscow. It's pronounced MOS koh.
Thank you! That actually annoyed me, with the reference to a "Russian-sounding name," since that the Idaho Moscow and the Russian Moscow are pronounced differently. A better clue would have been "Russian-looking name."
@Nancy (11:08) Yes, my experience and my thoughts exactly.
I left em empty and it worked for me!
@mathgent - I just did a quick numbers run on responses and came up with 37 positive, 6 negative, and 55 about something else e.g how to fill in the rebus, Phil Rizutto, how to pronounce MOSCOW…
Was surprised how quickly I managed to dismantled this Thursday gimmick. When I got to American Idol/Voice, it had to be SIMON C O WELL, and instinctively I skipped the 'holes' and it fit. I tested the W (WAS) and L (LESSEE) on the downs and that was good enough for me. Jumped straigh to the next set of circles "Russian sounding name", and saw that MOSC O W fit, same pattern, so jumped back to the top with Dirty look and SC O WL obviously completed the pattern. Then looked at 4 Down, 1, 2, 3 and with the M from SIMON was able to deduce NUMBERS, then W[HOLE]NUMBERS. Boom - gimmick solved in about 90 seconds. Of course, I had the rest of the fill to complete but knowing the down [HOLES] made it an easy task. Night and day difference from A STAR IS B OR N from last week, although that gimmick fell quick as well - it was the PPP trivia-fest that was the nightmare for me.
Pick up any dictionary written before, say, 1975. I'll wait.
Look up Moscow. You will see either the only pronunciation listed, or the preferred pronunciation listed as Mos-cow, rhyming with 'ow'.
Now grab a dictionary from after, say, 1990. Look up Moscow. You will see the preferred pronunciation listed as Mos-koh, rhyming with 'oh'.
In Russian, it is neither of those but musk-vah.
This is an example of a word where the pronunciation has shifted within my lifetime.
[The poster child for this is flaccid, which ALWAYS pronounced flak-sid until the 1970s, when flas-id started to come in, and has now taken over completely.]
No, I had no errors and it made me fill in “hole” in all the circles before it would complete.
I am a day off track this week due to some medical events but wanted to weigh in to echo echo echo echo my approval of and delight in solving this one! However, I am puzzled by the fact that I solve on the NYT Games app yet I did not have to “dig” the holes (i.e. enter the rebus HOLE) in the circles to get the happy music at the end of the solve. Does anyone understand why some of us had to and some did not?
Wow…small world! I’m a graduate of Lewiston High School. Glad Rex was as pleased to see Moscow make an appearance as I was.
(I spent a fair number of Saturdays seeing the Vandals play in the Kibbie Dome…or the Cougs, just a few miles down the road in Pullman.)
Have only managed to stop by the old hometown a couple of times this century, alas. Life can take a person to distant and different places…and then it starts to go by ever so fast.
I print from the NYT puzzle page and it always gives me circles etc. Sometimes think it would be more fun if it didn't.
I don't think you have to be old to enjoy not staring at a screen while solving! 😀
Same here. App on iPhone. First time I’ve been informed of the more/rebus ability. Thanks to all who mentioned it. The app often leaves much to be desired - for one, no theme given except on Sunday.
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