THEME: "I'M ON A ROLL!" — the letters "IM" appear (in circles) on top of (i.e. directly above) some kind of "roll":
Theme answers:
IMPS (12A: Mischievous little devils)
SNAKE EYES (16A: Pair of ones, in dice) (a dice roll)
RIMS (22A: Edges)
CLASS ROSTER (29A: Sheet with student names) (a class roll)
IMAGE (43A: Photograph, e.g.)
CINNAMON BUN (47A: Sticky breakfast treat) (a sweet roll)
Word of the Day: TIMOR-Leste (19A: ___-Leste, country in Southeast Asia) —
[The capital is DILI (4)—seems like potentially important crossword information]
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor - of which the western half is administered by Indonesia - the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-western half, and the minor islands of Atauro and Jaco. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea. The country's size is 14,950 square kilometres (5,770 sq mi). Dili - on the north coast of Timor - is its capital and largest city.
East Timor was settled by waves of Austronesian and Papuan peoples, which are reflected in the country's diverse mix of cultures and languages reflecting its links to Southeast Asia and Melanesia despite its small area. East Timor came under Portuguese influence in the sixteenth century, remaining a Portuguese colony until 1975. Internal conflict preceded a unilateral declaration of independence and an Indonesian invasion and annexation. Resistance continued throughout Indonesian rule, and, in 1999, a United Nations–sponsored act of self-determination led to Indonesia relinquishing control of the territory. On 20 May 2002, as Timor-Leste, it became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century. That same year, relations with Indonesia were established and normalized, with Indonesia also supporting East Timor's accession into ASEAN. (wikipedia)
• • •
[Rosamond Smith = pen name of Joyce Carol Oates!]
A very easy Monday puzzle, with a revealer that absolutely did its job. I really should've figured out the revealer before I got there. Once the second set of circled squares turned out also to be "IM," I knew I was dealing with some kind of "I'M ON..." situation, but at every turn, my brain came up only with gibberish. I'M ON ... ONES? I'M ON ... A LIST? I'M ON ... SWEETS? That SNAKE EYES answer should've been a dead giveaway—of course it's a roll (of the dice), but it wasn't until the actual revealer showed its face that I realized what was going on. D'oh! Of course, roll! Maybe if the puzzle hadn't been so phenomenally easy to solve Downs-only, I might've had a little more time to mull it over, and I'M ON A ROLL would've come to me sooner. As it was, the puzzle put up almost no resistance—Downs-only is supposed to add challenge, but today, not so much. There was one big problem, right up front: SPAM. I don't think of actual old-fashioned telephone calls as SPAM—email, yes, texts, maybe, but not phone calls. I don't know why. My land line (why do we still have one of these???) often comes up with "SPAM RISK" as the caller, so of course phone calls can be SPAM. But it just didn't compute. So I had SCAM. And my backup answer was SHAM, lol. But SCAM left me with IMCS in the cross, and try as I might, I couldn't justify it. Couldn't think of any way that IMCS could be a thing. IMHS didn't work either. And that's when IMPS showed up. SPAM, sure. Gotta be SPAM. And it was. After that, only a handful of Downs gave me even the slightest pause, and none of those caused what you'd call actual trouble. A textbook Monday, though not as boring as "textbook Monday" sounds. It's a cute idea, neatly executed. The grid is smooth, if not scintillating. Good revealer, no cringe. I'm happy with this.
I liked the rhyming keyboard cluing on ONE and TWO, though I am now very conscious that ONE is not only in the clue for SNAKE EYES, but the very definition of SNAKE EYES, so while normally that kind of dupe wouldn't really register with me, today it does. I might've gone ODE / NODE instead of ONE / NONE just to get rid of it, but then I would've missed out on the ONE/TWO cluing thing, which was nice, and nobody is really gonna notice that ONE dupe anyway, so ... it's hard to complain. So consider this me noticing something, not complaining about it. OK? OK. I have never liked HEHE as a plausible laugh sound. It's HEE, that's the syllable. Maybe HEE-HEE or TEE-HEE. I'd also accept HEH if it's a kind of sneering laugh or chortle. But HEHE just doesn't wash. Never seen it anywhere but crosswords. But I got no other complaints. I am kinda curious about the cheater squares* in this one. The ones after HEHE / before SEAT make sense. I can see how a cheater in those places would've made it easier to fill those corners cleanly—you've got two long Downs right alongside one another, so why not take a little pressure off with a cheater if it makes the overall fill smoother. But the other cheaters, after LOS and before TWO, those are weirder. Small corners should be easy to fill. I see that the NW has the added thematic burden, with the "I'M" creating more theme density than you'd normally see in a small corner, so maybe that was what made the cheaters necessary. It's funny that an innocuous word like SKØR is actually anchoring three (3!) themers—two "IM"-containing words and SNAKE EYES. And adjacent ERIC does the same, running through SNAKE EYES, RIMS, and CLASS ROSTER. I guess the cheaters were a way of ensuring that the surrounding fill remained clean and uneventful, so that the theme could shine through. Again, unless you construct, you're not going to notice these tiny little technical details. I'm all for strategic cheaters if they really do make the difference between whistle-clean and even slightly rough fill.
As for the Downs-only adventure, after all the SCAM/SHAM/SPAM business, I had the following issues: I had PLOTZ for SWOON (30D: Faint from emotion); I balked at EVERY, since why would you say "each and EVERY" if they were in fact identical (33D: Each); I couldn't remember TINA's name for a few seconds (kept wanting LISA, but then remembering that was "The Simpsons," not "Bob's Burgers" (57D: "Bob's Burgers" daughter)); and CASH ... not sure why, but that didn't come to me immediately—I think I wanted a denomination, like TENS (54D: A.T.M. withdrawal). That's it. A relatively bumpless ride. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*cheater squares = black squares that do not change the puzzle word count, called "cheaters" because they make filling the grid much easier for the constructor.
Easy. Cute and clever and beginner friendly, liked it.
A couple of days ago TINA would have been a WOE but I very recently did a puzzle with pretty much the same clue.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #908 was one of the easiest Croce I’ve done. No real problems anywhere. It was slightly tougher than last week’s Fri. and Sat. puzzles. Hope your mileage doesn’t vary.
LOS NUEVE TRIO, DOWN in ALTO TOWN, had this CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA on their menu. It was the SIGNATURE ROLL at the SWOON cafe and no one SAID NO when they took their TERN at a NOSH.
NASA, the owner of LOS NUEVE TRIO, SITS BY the PECAN BUN and keeps his EYES on TIMOR, the biggest SNAKE in TOWN. TIMOR would NOSH on a KIWI PECAN pie and pay no CASH for it while all EYES would SWOON over the CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA. The food was DRY and SOSO, but there were no other SITES DOWN in ALTO TOWN where EVERY body ATE and be somewhat CONTENTS.
TIMOR was no SANTA and he lacked CLASS. He wore an AGED SUIT that had the IMAGE of a MAN who DIED in the WAR in MIAMI where SALSA was on the TACIT ROSTER. YEAH, this MAN had ONE or TWO ANGER issues as he'd LOOT all the CASH SITES and sing "I"M ON A ROLL!"....As If he were a POET! The LIST goes on....
Yet....He had a CINNAMON BUN named ANA. YEAH, even that SNAKE of a MAN could SWOON at EVERY TERN she took. ANA drank SKOL and ATE SPAM CARNE like NONE other. She sang ALTO and played an OBOE with CLASS....ERGO, his ANGER would slow DOWN as she TORE through his RESET button.
When ANA came to LOS NUEVE TRIO SWOON cafe, NASA would HEHE like some CANNONS that TORE through the TETONS. He no longer would HARP on TIMOR. A little free NOSH of a KIWI PECAN pie didn't cause him ANGER. There were still a SLEW of IMPS who took a SEAT at SWOON and ATE his SIGNATURE CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA. TIMOR had his little CINNAMON BUN, ANA, and ANA was happy singing ALTO and playing the OBOE for him and the IMPS. No one SAID NO and there wasn't a DRY EYES in the joint.
Yay Malaika! Awesome job. I agree with Rex that this was quite easy, I actually beat my Monday record by over half a minute, but it was enjoyable, very clean and a really smart and well-executed theme… fun!
@Lewis and I had a TACIT understanding about pointing out anagrams, but I lost it in the ATTIC.
If a DOT is half of an umlaut, but one-third of an ellipsis . . .
I believe that the mouse-world expression (see 51A) is "Quiet ASA mouse", not "Silent ASA mouse". Of course Kristi Noem might well have used a silencer on her gun while dispatching the family's pet mouse, but she's kept quiet on that.
Some answers today are teasers, some are TEASETS. I liked 'em all, even more so once I realized that M...M... M...Malaika was the constructor. Thanks Ms. M!
I don't understand the revealer. What does IM ON A ROLL mean in the context of the three "IM"s in the grid? Couldn't it have just been IM ON A HIGH or IM ON CLOUD NINE?
Similarly , the only thing I can add is although I am not a speed solver, every so often a puzzle just seems to be made for me, like today, and I finished in just above 4 mins 30 seconds.
Easy breezy Monday, nicely done! Only one overwrite, dyE before HUE at 45D. No WOEs, although I think this is the first time I've heard East Timor referred to as Timor Leste (19A)
I had one downs-only snag in the NE that held me up for quite a while. I thought “Start _____ (begin again)” was “over,” and I didn’t fill in “Therefore…” thinking it could be ERGO, “thus” or something else. So when I saw the DOWNT__N, it was obviously DOWNTurN. That held me up forever, trying to come up with a therefore synonym that ended in U. Finally saw it could also be DOWNTOWN but really didn’t want to pull “over.”
When I got the revealer, I thought the gimmick was that the circled IMs were just rolling like balls. I thought that was pretty weak, but then I saw that the clue referred to the “placement” of the circled letters and noticed that CINNAMON could be a roll. So, idiot that I am, I tried to figure out if there is some kind of edible snake roll. It didn’t sound very appetizing. Then I noticed that there could be a class roll, so they aren’t edible rolls but STILL didn’t see how snake was a roll. I finally saw that it’s the while answer that is a roll, not just the first part of it. All of that happened in about five seconds, but still… sheesh.
Didn't use the theme, and finished in normal time for an easy Monday. My only gaffe was misreading the clue for SAIDNO as "refuses," which left me with SAYSNO. But KIWI was obvious, so I fixed it in time for the happy music.
I treated it has a themeless and didn’t miss much since the theme was kind of an afterthought anyway. I still had to have the explanation from Rex to “get it”.
The only speed bumps were the product placement v.v. the country (SKOL x TIMOR) and the name of the park crossing today’s Spanish class (TETON x NUEVE). The rest of it was just standard Monday plug and chug. Nice job by Malaika - kept it clean and breezy along with a kind of a neat theme idea.
Rick K - everything under the IMs is a different type of roll… a roll of the dice, a roll that you eat, and a roll that you call for attendance. So IM is literally “on a roll”.
Solve times have been under average for over a week. Call me butter, because IMONAROLL, HEHE. Nice puz!
Some interesting info from Malaika's notes (found on xwordinfo):
"I submitted this on October 12, 2023, and it was accepted on January 5, 2024. It ran on May 6, 2024.
There are 76 clues in this puzzle. Twenty-nine (38%) were kept identical. Nineteen (25%) were updated slightly. Twenty-eight (37%) are new from the NYT editors."
I left the revealer blank after filling in all the theme answers, and dug in my heels, determined to figure it out. I did see that I’M was atop the three theme answers, and kept thinking the reveal was I’M OVER ___. But over what? What do SNAKE, CLASS, and CINNAMON have in common?
Man, was I on the wrong track! I finally uncled, filled in the revealer, and smiled at being so fairly beaten. High respect to the constructor for presenting such a potent challenge to conquer, and for so excellently outwitting me. I love being gotten like that.
I also love that DRY/EYES cross!
This is a Monday beauty, giving the new and newer solvers a good chance to succeed in filling the grid in, and introducing the concept of theme, which many newer solvers don’t realize that crosswords can have. (I know this because I’ve taught many newer solvers in my crossword solving classes at an adjunct of UNC-Asheville).
So, here’s a puzzle perfect for the beginning solver and yet one that gave me, an experienced solver, a run for my money in trying to figure out the theme.
When you can satisfy such a range of solver in a single grid, Malaika, you’ve made one special puzzle. Brava, thank you, and forge on please!
That MWascally MWabbit Malaika snuck another one in on us, eh? Usually she beats me up pretty good, but this was suspiciously smooth sailing. Cute revealer. We'll probably hear some grousing about the little circles, but I usually find them amusing and this was no exception.
Nobody has ever SWOONED except in stories, and even then it's a very specific type of high strung woman. Let's call her a trope. Tropes swoon. Like intergalactic space travel, ghosts in the afterlife, and the Denver Broncos hopes for next year, it's not real.
Timor-Leste is the same size as Connecticut. The Chamber of Commerce isn't working hard enough to post enticing photos. It seems bleak. They do have a nice big statue of Jesus.
I don't trust a regular CINNAMON BUN since I've eaten a CINN-A-BON. Corporate America owns me.
And worse than that, I was utterly gobsmacked when people wrote yesterday how the theme clues were too long. This is the wordiest word activity of all word activities and people are acting like me in 5th grade by judging a book by how many pages it has.
@dgd 4:36 PM (yd) The odd reason we need to wear our seat belt during 100% of the flight is Boeing takes FAA inspectors on cruises rather than putting bolts in all the doors. I'm imagining whoever sat in that seat is still in therapy.
1 Why Moaning Myrtle moans. 2 How niche programs in liberal arts universities maintain funding. 3 Legendary boatwright's email campaign claiming a specific hickory is for hicks. 4 Cannibal served dish he called Aide of Social Icon.
1 SNAKE EYES ANGER 2 AMP CLASS ROSTER 3 NOAH PECAN SPAM (~) 4 ATE MLK MAN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sign up your sciatic. ENROLL THE NERVE.
Really? We couldn't eliminate that extra IM in TIMOR? Rhetorical question - of course it could have been done. DOS/IMHO/CIDER/DIMS. Or ATE/RIME/EAGER/SIMS. Or any of several others.
Where I got in trouble downs-only was the Southeast. Wanted ALOT or ATON for "Whole bunch," and I had GOLD for "Pirate's booty," and that made a real mess. But as soon as I looked at 59A ("Taco topping"), everything else fell in place.
I didn't even NOTICE the circles until I looked here - but once I did, I really appreciate this theme! Clever!
I keep an eye on my personal bests every now and then, and I’ve never noticed them changing. I set a new Monday PB today (3:23, a good 24 seconds better than my previous), and once I realized I had a chance at it, I was watching the timer in the app as I went. The recorded time matched what the timer said, so I don’t see any hinkiness going on.
Got a PB despite being rudely interrupted by a work call. Probably took me a full second to get up to pause! Nice to have the occasional puzzle that is an absolute breeze.
Hey All ! A lot of Theme density in that NW section. For it to come out that clean is amazing! IM sure it went through many iterations.
This is our Malaika, yes? Congrats. Good on ya getting your puz in.
Neat Theme, with getting ROLL to mean three different things. Even a CINNAMON ROLL for @M&A!
I drive by DOWNTOWN EVERY day going back and forth from work. Nothing NUEVE. HEHE.
The Golden Knights are out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Shoot. They gave it a good go. Dallas gets their revenge for us beating them before in the playoffs. Might watch a game or two in the Finals, but playoffs without your team in them suck. 😁
Another Monday...
No F's (Another thing that sucks!) RooMonster DarrinV
CINNAMON rolls! I'M ON board for a puztheme that has that.
staff weeject pick: LOS. Slowed m&e up a nanosecond or two, right outta the chute. Didn't know-know any Mexican holidays other than yesterday's Cinco de Mayo one.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Mischievous little devils} = IMPS. First entry M&A splatzed into the puzgrid.
some other faves: SANTASUIT. DOWNTOWN. KIWI. SIGNATURE. ANGER clue. CINNAMONBUN.
Thanx for the bun fun, Ms. Malaika darlin. Nice puz rollout.
I have a friend named Timur; Timor just always looks wrong to me. Skur seemed as plausible as Skor so officially DNF but really enjoyed the theme and revealer.
I guess I picked the right day to experiment with a downs only solve. It was a satisfying challenge for me. Made it just hard enough to keep it interesting, without completely destroying my ego. Once solved, I enjoyed figuring out the delightful theme. All in all, a 10/10 for me.
easy. I dont think I will ever get a sub 4 minute time though. My fingers just dont move that fast and when I try to go faster I have typos and have to backtrack. It does not help that I am lying in bed in my PJs when I solve. any secrets to smooth out the mechanics while solving? I do not think I was stumped by anything today. I play the piano so I think I have the finger dexterity...
Congrats to all you speed demons out there on your PB's. I think some of us prefer to enjoy the process a little more if we take our time, but hey, whatevs, he said, trying to sound all modern.
Liked this one. Hadn't seen TIMOR in a while and TINA as clued is a stranger but otherwise, read clue, write in answer, which is a Monday doing Monday. Very nice revealer too.
Hey @Roo- I think you mean "nuevo" for new. Good old NUEVE is just nine, and "new" can be nuevo or nueva (with an s if you're talking about a plural) but not NUEVE, but you knew that and were just making a Spanish pun and I'm being pedantic so never mind.
Nice Mondecito indeed, MH. I Mostly Hope for a Monday this good, it here it was. Thanks for all the fun.
I don't know my absolute best solving times bc I went through a phase of doing them on paper, then typing them in to check and get credit for streaks or whatever. Best time is 1:06 just reading and typing. Today's 3:25 must be on the better side.
I don't think there is any clock adjusting going on for using reveal features or bonuses.
We saw The Idea of You Saturday. As usual, Ann Hathaway was great -- beautiful, charming, brilliant acting job. It was only playing at one of our three nearby multiplexes and not many people there watching with us. I just learned that it's going to be streamed on Prime.
I've been doing Mondays on my IPad. I'm still getting the hang of it. I made a couple of mistakes using the program and I'm not a fast solver, but it still only took sixteen minutes.
I thought, before commenting, I should meander over to Wordplay to look at the Constructor's Note. I wanted to see whether Malaika or Joel was responsible for so much ridiculously easy, on-the-nose cluing.
I found this comment from Malaika:
"Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but I think it’s much harder to make an easy puzzle than it is to make a hard puzzle. I hope this was a breeze! Feel free to let me know how you felt on Twitter."
I'm not on Twitter, so I'll let you know here, Malaika:
I'm sure that well before you were a puzzle person, you nonetheless possessed all the native intelligence that you have right now. While you wouldn't have wanted to be discouraged by a Monday puzzle, you wouldn't have wanted your intelligence insulted either.
So that you might have looked at today's clues for ADDS (4A); ATE (4D); NOAH (56D); and worst of all, HARP (53D) and said: "Are you kidding me? Does the puzzlemaker think I'm some sort of idiot?"
Yes, Malaika, today's puzzle certainly WAS "a breeze". But methinks that, even with the best of intention, you way overdid it.
For most of the solve, I was wondering whether the theme consisted of the circled letters or the long acrosses. Somehow it never occurred to me to see the one in relation to the other. Doh!
East TIMOR got quite a bit of press a couple decades ago during their long war for independence, so I knew it well enough. But the existential question is "where do islands stop being in Asia and start being in Oceania?"
@Dash Riprock I got a couple of messed up fast times early on in doing the XW. In my case, the cause were puzzles I solved partially or fully offline. I found that I could solve for this by making sure the first and last letter I entered was when I was online.
I track my Monday and Sunday bests manually as they are not 2:37 and 6:57 respectively and I suspect never will be!
"Nobody has ever SWOONED except in stories, and even then it's a very specific type of high strung woman."--@Gary J.
I've heard it said that women swooned in real life, too, Gary. And that the culprit was the corset. That infamous, breath-constricting, torturous, cruel-and-unusual-punishment horror that Victorian society inflicted upon its women.
You'd swoon, too, Gary, if you couldn't bloody breathe! If I'd been alive back then, women would have ditched the diabolical thing decades before they finally did.
Easy and fun. Never gave a thought to the theme and enjoyed finding out here. Like @Nancy was surprised by the literalness of some of the clues, but felt the general cleanness of the grid made this one entertaining,
I enjoyed this and found it relatively easy, but not as easy as Rex did. (My time was about 90 seconds faster than my average Monday...and two minutes slower than my best.)
But all I really want to say is, "Good work, Malaika!"
@Nancy 11:11 AM Many years in the past, I played a video game called Second Life and at the time I learned about "steampunk." My impression was its devotees enjoyed dressing up like Mr. Peanut, being oddly obsessed with gears, and flying around in contraptions you'd find in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can do that in the video game.
I later learned people were doing the steampunk thing in real life and corsets appear to be a main feature of the women's costume. Everybody wears a top hat apparently.
All this is to say maybe corsets will make a comeback. Maybe you and I can go shopping at Lord & Taylor's in the corset department and we'll eschew whale bones for some modern material less murderery. And maybe SWOONING will become the next big thing.
Hands up for a personal best, in my case just under 7.5 minutes with down clues only. (I've done much faster doing it "normally".) Unfortunately I guessed 54 across was CONTENDS which made the 57 down unknown name DINA so no congratulations message, and a few minutes burned to sort that out.
I couldn't get the theme because I completely missed the circled squares After it was complete, I allowed myself to read the across clues and the revealer really revealed!
[Spelling Bee: Sun currently -2; I was very tired yd from a hike, yeah that's why.]
I'm a somewhat recent subscriber to NYT Games and have been solving each day's puzzle along with a few previous puzzles (from the archive). I came here today to express the profound sadness I experienced after working the July 4th, 2023 puzzle. I read Clare's writeup and then scooted off to the always enjoyable comments section...
Where I saw a post by LMS where she explained she was just getting back to commenting after a (self-described) lengthy hiatus. Oh no! My reverse-solving trek is about to be significantly less interesting/enjoyable. At least for a while.
I'll find a way to slog through it, with help from the many other wonderful commenters. Thank you all. This is a fun group!
I just hope it's not TOO long of a (reverse) hiatus...
Kitshef Timor PH 7:01 AM cited xwordinfo: 37% of clues were completely different. So we don’t know who came up with the clue. My guess is she/they wanted to toughen the puzzle up a little with trivia. Portuguese version of the country. Much less known in the US. No circles in TIMOR. I am sure they feel no circles no problem. I agree with them.
Beginner-easy, yet having a theme with some depth. Three entirely different senses of the word "ROLL," all valid, tied together beautifully. WTG, @Malaika!
The grid is hard to navigate. The three central downs are the only path from north to south. And there ought to be a way to fix that SW to get rid of HEHE. Other than those nits, it was a fine Monday effort. Birdie.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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60 comments:
Easy. Cute and clever and beginner friendly, liked it.
A couple of days ago TINA would have been a WOE but I very recently did a puzzle with pretty much the same clue.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #908 was one of the easiest Croce I’ve done. No real problems anywhere. It was slightly tougher than last week’s Fri. and Sat. puzzles. Hope your mileage doesn’t vary.
LOS NUEVE TRIO, DOWN in ALTO TOWN, had this CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA on their menu. It was the SIGNATURE ROLL at the SWOON cafe and no one SAID NO when they took their TERN at a NOSH.
NASA, the owner of LOS NUEVE TRIO, SITS BY the PECAN BUN and keeps his EYES on TIMOR, the biggest SNAKE in TOWN. TIMOR would NOSH on a KIWI PECAN pie and pay no CASH for it while all EYES would SWOON over the CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA. The food was DRY and SOSO, but there were no other SITES DOWN in ALTO TOWN where EVERY body ATE and be somewhat CONTENTS.
TIMOR was no SANTA and he lacked CLASS. He wore an AGED SUIT that had the IMAGE of a MAN who DIED in the WAR in MIAMI where SALSA was on the TACIT ROSTER. YEAH, this MAN had ONE or TWO ANGER issues as he'd LOOT all the CASH SITES and sing "I"M ON A ROLL!"....As If he were a POET! The LIST goes on....
Yet....He had a CINNAMON BUN named ANA. YEAH, even that SNAKE of a MAN could SWOON at EVERY TERN she took. ANA drank SKOL and ATE SPAM CARNE like NONE other. She sang ALTO and played an OBOE with CLASS....ERGO, his ANGER would slow DOWN as she TORE through his RESET button.
When ANA came to LOS NUEVE TRIO SWOON cafe, NASA would HEHE like some CANNONS that TORE through the TETONS. He no longer would HARP on TIMOR. A little free NOSH of a KIWI PECAN pie didn't cause him ANGER. There were still a SLEW of IMPS who took a SEAT at SWOON and ATE his SIGNATURE CARNE SPAM BUN filled with SALSA. TIMOR had his little CINNAMON BUN, ANA, and ANA was happy singing ALTO and playing the OBOE for him and the IMPS. No one SAID NO and there wasn't a DRY EYES in the joint.
And that's the truth!
Yay Malaika! Awesome job. I agree with Rex that this was quite easy, I actually beat my Monday record by over half a minute, but it was enjoyable, very clean and a really smart and well-executed theme… fun!
@Lewis and I had a TACIT understanding about pointing out anagrams, but I lost it in the ATTIC.
If a DOT is half of an umlaut, but one-third of an ellipsis . . .
I believe that the mouse-world expression (see 51A) is "Quiet ASA mouse", not "Silent ASA mouse". Of course Kristi Noem might well have used a silencer on her gun while dispatching the family's pet mouse, but she's kept quiet on that.
Some answers today are teasers, some are TEASETS. I liked 'em all, even more so once I realized that M...M... M...Malaika was the constructor. Thanks Ms. M!
I don't understand the revealer. What does IM ON A ROLL mean in the context of the three "IM"s in the grid? Couldn't it have just been IM ON A HIGH or IM ON CLOUD NINE?
Malakai, fun puzzle! Perfect Monday.
Similarly , the only thing I can add is although I am not a speed solver, every so often a puzzle just seems to be made for me, like today, and I finished in just above 4 mins 30 seconds.
Easy breezy Monday, nicely done! Only one overwrite, dyE before HUE at 45D. No WOEs, although I think this is the first time I've heard East Timor referred to as Timor Leste (19A)
I had one downs-only snag in the NE that held me up for quite a while. I thought “Start _____ (begin again)” was “over,” and I didn’t fill in “Therefore…” thinking it could be ERGO, “thus” or something else. So when I saw the DOWNT__N, it was obviously DOWNTurN. That held me up forever, trying to come up with a therefore synonym that ended in U. Finally saw it could also be DOWNTOWN but really didn’t want to pull “over.”
When I got the revealer, I thought the gimmick was that the circled IMs were just rolling like balls. I thought that was pretty weak, but then I saw that the clue referred to the “placement” of the circled letters and noticed that CINNAMON could be a roll. So, idiot that I am, I tried to figure out if there is some kind of edible snake roll. It didn’t sound very appetizing. Then I noticed that there could be a class roll, so they aren’t edible rolls but STILL didn’t see how snake was a roll. I finally saw that it’s the while answer that is a roll, not just the first part of it. All of that happened in about five seconds, but still… sheesh.
Didn't use the theme, and finished in normal time for an easy Monday. My only gaffe was misreading the clue for SAIDNO as "refuses," which left me with SAYSNO. But KIWI was obvious, so I fixed it in time for the happy music.
Got a sub 4-min solve today; was so focused on getting a PB I didn’t even stop to consider a theme…
I am trying really hard to get a Monday in under 4 minutes. Got a long way to go (today was 4:29), but I can feel myself getting closer...
So psyched to see TINA (my cartoon alter ego) in a puzzle by our very own Malaika.
I treated it has a themeless and didn’t miss much since the theme was kind of an afterthought anyway. I still had to have the explanation from Rex to “get it”.
The only speed bumps were the product placement v.v. the country (SKOL x TIMOR) and the name of the park crossing today’s Spanish class (TETON x NUEVE). The rest of it was just standard Monday plug and chug. Nice job by Malaika - kept it clean and breezy along with a kind of a neat theme idea.
Rick K - everything under the IMs is a different type of roll… a roll of the dice, a roll that you eat, and a roll that you call for attendance. So IM is literally “on a roll”.
Solve times have been under average for over a week. Call me butter, because IMONAROLL, HEHE. Nice puz!
Some interesting info from Malaika's notes (found on xwordinfo):
"I submitted this on October 12, 2023, and it was accepted on January 5, 2024. It ran on May 6, 2024.
There are 76 clues in this puzzle. Twenty-nine (38%) were kept identical. Nineteen (25%) were updated slightly. Twenty-eight (37%) are new from the NYT editors."
Oh, terrific theme!
I left the revealer blank after filling in all the theme answers, and dug in my heels, determined to figure it out. I did see that I’M was atop the three theme answers, and kept thinking the reveal was I’M OVER ___. But over what? What do SNAKE, CLASS, and CINNAMON have in common?
Man, was I on the wrong track! I finally uncled, filled in the revealer, and smiled at being so fairly beaten. High respect to the constructor for presenting such a potent challenge to conquer, and for so excellently outwitting me. I love being gotten like that.
I also love that DRY/EYES cross!
This is a Monday beauty, giving the new and newer solvers a good chance to succeed in filling the grid in, and introducing the concept of theme, which many newer solvers don’t realize that crosswords can have. (I know this because I’ve taught many newer solvers in my crossword solving classes at an adjunct of UNC-Asheville).
So, here’s a puzzle perfect for the beginning solver and yet one that gave me, an experienced solver, a run for my money in trying to figure out the theme.
When you can satisfy such a range of solver in a single grid, Malaika, you’ve made one special puzzle. Brava, thank you, and forge on please!
Administrative note: Big family event this week; I shall be away, returning over the weekend. Wishing all a lovely week ahead!
That MWascally MWabbit Malaika snuck another one in on us, eh? Usually she beats me up pretty good, but this was suspiciously smooth sailing. Cute revealer. We'll probably hear some grousing about the little circles, but I usually find them amusing and this was no exception.
Nobody has ever SWOONED except in stories, and even then it's a very specific type of high strung woman. Let's call her a trope. Tropes swoon. Like intergalactic space travel, ghosts in the afterlife, and the Denver Broncos hopes for next year, it's not real.
Timor-Leste is the same size as Connecticut. The Chamber of Commerce isn't working hard enough to post enticing photos. It seems bleak. They do have a nice big statue of Jesus.
I don't trust a regular CINNAMON BUN since I've eaten a CINN-A-BON. Corporate America owns me.
And worse than that, I was utterly gobsmacked when people wrote yesterday how the theme clues were too long. This is the wordiest word activity of all word activities and people are acting like me in 5th grade by judging a book by how many pages it has.
@dgd 4:36 PM (yd)
The odd reason we need to wear our seat belt during 100% of the flight is Boeing takes FAA inspectors on cruises rather than putting bolts in all the doors. I'm imagining whoever sat in that seat is still in therapy.
Propers: 8
Places: 4
Products: 3
Partials: 2
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 (27%)
Uniclues:
1 Why Moaning Myrtle moans.
2 How niche programs in liberal arts universities maintain funding.
3 Legendary boatwright's email campaign claiming a specific hickory is for hicks.
4 Cannibal served dish he called Aide of Social Icon.
1 SNAKE EYES ANGER
2 AMP CLASS ROSTER
3 NOAH PECAN SPAM (~)
4 ATE MLK MAN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sign up your sciatic. ENROLL THE NERVE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Really? We couldn't eliminate that extra IM in TIMOR? Rhetorical question - of course it could have been done. DOS/IMHO/CIDER/DIMS. Or ATE/RIME/EAGER/SIMS. Or any of several others.
I didn't grok the theme until post-solve.
Croce Freestyle 908 was easy. At the time, it was the second-fastest Croce among those I finished without an error (subsequently beaten by #909).
Where I got in trouble downs-only was the Southeast. Wanted ALOT or ATON for "Whole bunch," and I had GOLD for "Pirate's booty," and that made a real mess. But as soon as I looked at 59A ("Taco topping"), everything else fell in place.
I didn't even NOTICE the circles until I looked here - but once I did, I really appreciate this theme! Clever!
@dash riprock
I keep an eye on my personal bests every now and then, and I’ve never noticed them changing. I set a new Monday PB today (3:23, a good 24 seconds better than my previous), and once I realized I had a chance at it, I was watching the timer in the app as I went. The recorded time matched what the timer said, so I don’t see any hinkiness going on.
Got a PB despite being rudely interrupted by a work call. Probably took me a full second to get up to pause! Nice to have the occasional puzzle that is an absolute breeze.
Hey All !
A lot of Theme density in that NW section. For it to come out that clean is amazing! IM sure it went through many iterations.
This is our Malaika, yes? Congrats. Good on ya getting your puz in.
Neat Theme, with getting ROLL to mean three different things. Even a CINNAMON ROLL for @M&A!
I drive by DOWNTOWN EVERY day going back and forth from work. Nothing NUEVE. HEHE.
The Golden Knights are out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Shoot. They gave it a good go. Dallas gets their revenge for us beating them before in the playoffs. Might watch a game or two in the Finals, but playoffs without your team in them suck. 😁
Another Monday...
No F's (Another thing that sucks!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
PLOTZ is delightful in that I have not heard it since I left NY in 2003. That is a very regional word since it comes from Yiddish i believe.
CINNAMON rolls! I'M ON board for a puztheme that has that.
staff weeject pick: LOS. Slowed m&e up a nanosecond or two, right outta the chute. Didn't know-know any Mexican holidays other than yesterday's Cinco de Mayo one.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Mischievous little devils} = IMPS. First entry M&A splatzed into the puzgrid.
some other faves: SANTASUIT. DOWNTOWN. KIWI. SIGNATURE. ANGER clue. CINNAMONBUN.
Thanx for the bun fun, Ms. Malaika darlin. Nice puz rollout.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
The word “I’m” is on top of three types of “rolls.”
I have a friend named Timur; Timor just always looks wrong to me. Skur seemed as plausible as Skor so officially DNF but really enjoyed the theme and revealer.
Very easy downs-only solve
I guess I picked the right day to experiment with a downs only solve. It was a satisfying challenge for me. Made it just hard enough to keep it interesting, without completely destroying my ego. Once solved, I enjoyed figuring out the delightful theme. All in all, a 10/10 for me.
easy. I dont think I will ever get a sub 4 minute time though. My fingers just dont move that fast and when I try to go faster I have typos and have to backtrack. It does not help that I am lying in bed in my PJs when I solve. any secrets to smooth out the mechanics while solving? I do not think I was stumped by anything today. I play the piano so I think I have the finger dexterity...
Congrats to all you speed demons out there on your PB's. I think some of us prefer to enjoy the process a little more if we take our time, but hey, whatevs, he said, trying to sound all modern.
Liked this one. Hadn't seen TIMOR in a while and TINA as clued is a stranger but otherwise, read clue, write in answer, which is a Monday doing Monday. Very nice revealer too.
Hey @Roo- I think you mean "nuevo" for new. Good old NUEVE is just nine, and "new" can be nuevo or nueva (with an s if you're talking about a plural) but not NUEVE, but you knew that and were just making a Spanish pun and I'm being pedantic so never mind.
Nice Mondecito indeed, MH. I Mostly Hope for a Monday this good, it here it was. Thanks for all the fun.
congra
This was a great Monday puzzle! I'm impressed.
I don't know my absolute best solving times bc I went through a phase of doing them on paper, then typing them in to check and get credit for streaks or whatever. Best time is 1:06 just reading and typing. Today's 3:25 must be on the better side.
I don't think there is any clock adjusting going on for using reveal features or bonuses.
We saw The Idea of You Saturday. As usual, Ann Hathaway was great -- beautiful, charming, brilliant acting job. It was only playing at one of our three nearby multiplexes and not many people there watching with us. I just learned that it's going to be streamed on Prime.
I've been doing Mondays on my IPad. I'm still getting the hang of it. I made a couple of mistakes using the program and I'm not a fast solver, but it still only took sixteen minutes.
I thought, before commenting, I should meander over to Wordplay to look at the Constructor's Note. I wanted to see whether Malaika or Joel was responsible for so much ridiculously easy, on-the-nose cluing.
I found this comment from Malaika:
"Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but I think it’s much harder to make an easy puzzle than it is to make a hard puzzle. I hope this was a breeze! Feel free to let me know how you felt on Twitter."
I'm not on Twitter, so I'll let you know here, Malaika:
I'm sure that well before you were a puzzle person, you nonetheless possessed all the native intelligence that you have right now. While you wouldn't have wanted to be discouraged by a Monday puzzle, you wouldn't have wanted your intelligence insulted either.
So that you might have looked at today's clues for ADDS (4A); ATE (4D); NOAH (56D); and worst of all, HARP (53D) and said: "Are you kidding me? Does the puzzlemaker think I'm some sort of idiot?"
Yes, Malaika, today's puzzle certainly WAS "a breeze". But methinks that, even with the best of intention, you way overdid it.
For most of the solve, I was wondering whether the theme consisted of the circled letters or the long acrosses. Somehow it never occurred to me to see the one in relation to the other. Doh!
East TIMOR got quite a bit of press a couple decades ago during their long war for independence, so I knew it well enough. But the existential question is "where do islands stop being in Asia and start being in Oceania?"
Thanks, @Malaika, for the easy and fun puzzle!
Thank you Mr. @egs for a fun Monday read!!!!
Read Rex's write-up!
It's about the answers beneath the circled letters.
The circled letters are "on" (atop) a dice roll, a class roll, and a pastry roll.
City with South Beach neighborhood is Miami Beach. Other wise nice Monday
@Dash Riprock I got a couple of messed up fast times early on in doing the XW. In my case, the cause were puzzles I solved partially or fully offline. I found that I could solve for this by making sure the first and last letter I entered was when I was online.
I track my Monday and Sunday bests manually as they are not 2:37 and 6:57 respectively and I suspect never will be!
"Nobody has ever SWOONED except in stories, and even then it's a very specific type of high strung woman."--@Gary J.
I've heard it said that women swooned in real life, too, Gary. And that the culprit was the corset. That infamous, breath-constricting, torturous, cruel-and-unusual-punishment horror that Victorian society inflicted upon its women.
You'd swoon, too, Gary, if you couldn't bloody breathe! If I'd been alive back then, women would have ditched the diabolical thing decades before they finally did.
Easy and fun. Never gave a thought to the theme and enjoyed finding out here. Like @Nancy was surprised by the literalness of some of the clues, but felt the general cleanness of the grid made this one entertaining,
Every for Each? Uh, no.
Pretty easy. A fun Monday, thanks Malaika :)
My pretty girl (upper right hand pic) made the NYT twice - once at Christmas & once in this puzzle (forgive me for this gushing moment).
I enjoyed this and found it relatively easy, but not as easy as Rex did. (My time was about 90 seconds faster than my average Monday...and two minutes slower than my best.)
But all I really want to say is, "Good work, Malaika!"
@Nancy 11:11 AM
Many years in the past, I played a video game called Second Life and at the time I learned about "steampunk." My impression was its devotees enjoyed dressing up like Mr. Peanut, being oddly obsessed with gears, and flying around in contraptions you'd find in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can do that in the video game.
I later learned people were doing the steampunk thing in real life and corsets appear to be a main feature of the women's costume. Everybody wears a top hat apparently.
All this is to say maybe corsets will make a comeback. Maybe you and I can go shopping at Lord & Taylor's in the corset department and we'll eschew whale bones for some modern material less murderery. And maybe SWOONING will become the next big thing.
Hands up for a personal best, in my case just under 7.5 minutes with down clues only. (I've done much faster doing it "normally".) Unfortunately I guessed 54 across was CONTENDS which made the 57 down unknown name DINA so no congratulations message, and a few minutes burned to sort that out.
I couldn't get the theme because I completely missed the circled squares After it was complete, I allowed myself to read the across clues and the revealer really revealed!
[Spelling Bee: Sun currently -2; I was very tired yd from a hike, yeah that's why.]
I'm a somewhat recent subscriber to NYT Games and have been solving each day's puzzle along with a few previous puzzles (from the archive).
I came here today to express the profound sadness I experienced after working the July 4th, 2023 puzzle. I read Clare's writeup and then scooted off to the always enjoyable comments section...
Where I saw a post by LMS where she explained she was just getting back to commenting after a (self-described) lengthy hiatus. Oh no! My reverse-solving trek is about to be significantly less interesting/enjoyable. At least for a while.
I'll find a way to slog through it, with help from the many other wonderful commenters. Thank you all. This is a fun group!
I just hope it's not TOO long of a (reverse) hiatus...
Kitshef
Timor
PH 7:01 AM cited xwordinfo: 37% of clues were completely different. So we don’t know who came up with the clue. My guess is she/they wanted to toughen the puzzle up a little with trivia. Portuguese version of the country. Much less known in the US.
No circles in TIMOR.
I am sure they feel no circles no problem.
I agree with them.
Beginner-easy, yet having a theme with some depth. Three entirely different senses of the word "ROLL," all valid, tied together beautifully. WTG, @Malaika!
The grid is hard to navigate. The three central downs are the only path from north to south. And there ought to be a way to fix that SW to get rid of HEHE. Other than those nits, it was a fine Monday effort. Birdie.
Wordle par.
I liked it. Hey, even Rex liked it. Best Monday NYT xword in a while.
ERGO NONE SKOR
YEAH, I know ABOUT A TRIO,
what EVERY 'DOWNTOWN' CLASS may do,
but TINA SAID that it's A NO NO,
ONE ON ONE ADDS uup to TWO.
--- NED CASH
ANA de Armas ought to get royalties. Yeah baby
Wordle bogey, three shots at the last letter.
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