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Name on a AAdvantage credit card / THU 7-18-24 / An "e-" one was first developed in 2003, for short / Oldest major TV network in the U.S. / "___ is long, life is short" (Greek aphorism)
Thursday, July 18, 2024
Constructor: Kareem Ayas
Relative difficulty: EASY-MEDIUM - I suppose it could play harder if you don't get the theme, but this seems like a pretty gettable gimmick.
THEME: WORMHOLES — Three astronomically themed answers in the top row continue from one circled square to another to form a longer answer because... I honestly don't know.
Word of the Day: PARAMUS (50A: New Jersey borough known for its shopping malls) —
Paramus (/pəˈræməs/ pə-RAM-əs[20]) is a borough in the central portion of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. A suburban bedroom community of New York City, Paramus is located 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km) northwest of Midtown Manhattan and approximately 8 miles (13 km) west of Upper Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal characterized Paramus as "quintessentially suburban".[21] The borough is also a major commercial hub for North Jersey (home to Garden State Plaza and various corporate headquarters).
• • •
Hi Crossworld, it's Eli again! I usually look froward to Thursday puzzles. I like a good gimmick theme and seeing what constructors can throw my way that I'm not expecting. Today was... not for me. Like, I see that the starts of the theme phrases are space-related, but why these phrases? Is there any reasoning behind which circled square goes to the next? Why are the "receiving" wormholes isolated squares? Why, if you remove that wormhole square, do two of the answers make readable (if incomplete) phrases but the third one doesn't? I sincerely hope I'm missing something here because this feels both flimsy and frankly, boring. Theme answers:
- STAR***T YOUR ENGINES (1A: Indy 500 directive / 23D: ---)
- COMET***O JESUS MOMENT (5A: Epiphany that precedes a major change / 21D: ---)
- NOVA***CANCY (10A: Neon sign outside a motel / 55D: ---)
- WORMHOLE (39D: Portal represented by each pair of circled letters in this puzzle)
 |
| 25A, from Marvel's Inhumans |
I'm honestly struggling to think of much to say about this one. It's theme-light, but the fill doesn't take advantage of the extra space. OR IS IT (11A: Question that casts doubt) looks interesting in the grid, visually, but I think you could find a flashier clue there. I like Anita ODAY (38D) and I enjoy an ALPACA (3D: Domesticated relative of the vicuña), but neither is terribly exciting. Hey, a Muppet! (ERNIE (68A: Muppet with a distinctive snickering laugh)). I'll never complain about the presence of a Muppet. Here's a video of a Bert and Ernie outtake. Watching Muppeteers improvise with each other is one of my favorite things.
Bullets:
Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook
]
Bullets:
- ARLEN (66A: Harold who composed "Over the Rainbow") — Nothing against the composer or the song, but Arlen always means one thing to me:
- MAUL (7D: Badly rough up) and ANI (62A: Small change in party parity?) — Both of these could have been clued as Star Wars (Darth Maul and Anakin Skywalker, respectively). I don't think Star Wars uses wormholes extensively, but I still see them there.
- UVA (40A: Charlottesville sch.) and OVA (35D: Products of oogenesis) — I wonder what it would be like if you introduced them? Do I get to use this clip in 2 blogs in one month? You bet I do!
That's all I've got for today. I need to STOP (44D: "Enough!").
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook
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91 comments:
Many GEODEs are quartz-filled, but "quartz" is in no way part and parcel of the definition of a geode. In this grand age of disinformation, the Times Xword doesn't need to contribute, even about relative trivialities. Could be clued something like "rock with an interior cavity," without making it more or less difficult.
(I do compliment the instructor for the WORMHOLE gimmick - a fun come-to-Jesus moment when I saw the light.)
Easy. I knew that 1A had to be START YOUR ENGINES, which obviously didn't fit. But I had STAR from crosses. Looked at 21D to complete it. Right length, but I already had the J from LOCKJAW (25A) and the E from SPACER (31A), so it couldn't go there. But COME T at 5A plus the J and E at 21D got me to COME TO JESUS MOMENT and from there it was a "whoosh". Except for a stupid typo which prevented the happy music on the first shot.
The continuations start in the only single squares ... usually a no-no, but in this case looking like holes allowing "a hypothetical shortcut between two points in spacetime," per definition of wormhole. The flow seemed random at first but the top resulting theme words and isolated "holes" are quite clever.
This theme was impossible for me. Thanks, Eli, for explaining it, I would have had no idea otherwise. It wasn’t that I didn’t know some of the phrases - TPS, yes, but STAR without the T, no idea. COMETOJESUSMOMENT, yes good, but where and how to find the COMETO part, no idea. It just all made no sense to me. Why would there be circles around some key letters but other theme parts are left to just hang out on their own? The placement of the circled letters as they should relate to the themers also seems random.
Other than all that, an easy puzzle.
I loved this! My come to Jesus moment with this puzzle was filling in that very entry so this fired on all cylinders for me. Space rocks and Carl Sagan is out of this world. Eli did have a good point about missing the rocketship with the Maul and Ani clues.
Is the New York Times trying to lose subscribers? Yesterday I was unable to access the puzzle because "Somebody was playing games with us?" (message on screen all day long). No explanation. No apology. Nothing.Yet many others were able to find it. Why?
Today, a puzzle that refers to "pairs of circled letters," except they aren't in pairs, they're scattered around the grid randomly. For the first time ever, I didn't understand the theme even after reading the column.
Very disappointing. You need to do better, Times.
Once I got the gimmick, it was pretty much Monday simple. I think 85% of my time was figuring out the gimmick, and the rest just flowed seamlessly and quickly.
The saving grace is that the theme just kind of hung in the background and didn’t get in the way. Even after solving, I had to rescan the grid because I forgot that WORMHOLE was a reveal. Then it finally came together.
Not a fan of the ongoing flirtation with text-speak (which is becoming more stale and less familiar - HOW R U reminds me of when the NYT tries to be hip with slang phrases that haven’t been around for a decade).
On the plus side - another SNSS (Single Named Singer Sighting). I wonder if CHER is to blame for this (is she technically CHER BONO ?). I wonder if she was inspired by another one-named predecessor or if it was just an offshoot of the Sonny and CHER phenomena. Oh well, she’s probably written a memoir, so hopefully it shall not remain a modern-day mystery. And of course you have to include MADONNA as a possible harbinger as well.
Weird and different and fun and I liked it.
Had my streak ended today. Some of it, just was filled in by solving around the puzzle NOVA for example. I could not get the theme and missed the "O" one COME TO and not realizing the "T" for start your engines. Good challenge. I have felt that some recent progressively harder (Saturday for example) have been easier. So it was nice to get beaten on a Thursday. I actually now enjoy the theme. Next time
The symmetry of the 3 theme phrases is also impressive.
This is Kareem’s third NYT puzzle. You may remember his first, with theme answers like BRONTO and STEGO in gray, and the revealer was [Writer’s reference ... or what each row of shaded letters is missing], for THESAURUS. You may also remember his last, five weeks ago, in which all 14 of the three-letter answers were SET.
Today, my Libra YEN for equilibrium was perfectly satisfied by the placement of the wormhole answers. The opening words of the those answers are all in the top row, where the left-to-right word counts are 4-5-4, giving it a palindromic balanced feel. The three vertical finishes of the theme answers are perfectly symmetrical (Hi, @Georgia!), with the left-to-right word count of 12-5-12, palindromic as well.
“Ahh,” says my Liba sensibilities, and “Ooh,” says my appreciation for skilled puzzlemaking.
My YEN for beauty was stoked by ASIAGO, SPY RING, SYNAPSE, COME TO JESUS MOMENT, and START YOUR ENGINES.
Funny moment when looking over the finished grid and mis-parsing 52A as the long-living palm, the EON SAGO.
Kareem, after your last puzzle, I posted that you may be one of those constructors with the “it” factor, with the potential to become a Crosslandia star. After today’s excellently made grid, with its witty original theme, I still feel the same. Keep ‘em coming, please, and thank you for such a splendid outing!
Mostly good. Had some trouble with the PPP in the south/west. ARLEN, BREST, O'DAY and PARAMUS.
I finished but the connective tissue seems totally random. If there’s a reason for it I’d love to hear it!
The most fun I have had with a puzzle in a long while. Lawyer by training but an astronomer at heart who grew up in the 60s watching the space race. Five stars.
Thought they were rebuses at first but finally figured it out, didn't mind construction at all, had a bit of trouble in the Northeast, CITI & BROS
Didn't get this one at all. Why are these words jumping? And how do I know where? Why are there unchecked squares?? What are these "pair of circled letters" they're talking about? I do see the six circled letters, but I have no clue how they pair up (or why)!
Hope you are doing better, Will Shortz. We'd love to have you back.
Skipping around looking for a place to start, wound up on the west side, and WORMHOLE was about the first thing I filled in, so I was expecting some start here and end there kinds of things and was not disappointed. Pretty cool trick.
Didn't know CITI as clued, ANI is back to not being a bird (although I'm glad it wasn't a Star Wars character), and I guess if spies are "assets" then SPYRING works, but it took lots of crosses to get there.
Nice to see Mr. ARLEN and be reminded of a great song from one of my favorite moviews.
I liked your Thursday a lot, KA. Tapped into some of my Knowledge Assets and thanks for all the fun.
PS-The National Weather Service certified that our local weather event yesterday was indeed a tornado, which landed a tree on our veterinarian's roof and closed several roads, but that was about it.
The pairs refer to each end of each wormhole. For example, a wormhole connects NOVA to CANCY so the A and C are the circled pair of letters.
Could not agree more. What a talented constructor.
My parents (of blessed memory) are buried in Paramus. I tell people my mother wanted to be near the shopping.
The next town over is Thisbe. (No it isn't.)
Fun Thursday!
Clever! Though I agree with @Eli that it's too bad the second (down) part of the last themer doesn't make sense on its own.
Initially I thought it was odd that the Indy command was STAR, sort of looking for a rebus (RT?), but kept whooshing along until I got ...JESUS MOMENT off the JE (but what could go in that first circled square?) and knew there had to be a COME TO around somewhere. Then whooshing along some more until YOUR ENGINES popped out and it all clicked.
I think this is a great trick puzzle for beginners. It's basically pretty easy, so you can feel really clever - plus get a little dopamine hit - with each theme solution.
Probably it could also be solved as a themeless, although you would be confused by O JESUS... and T YOUR and especially CANCY.
Good start to the day!
This took me a bit to figure out, but when I did it fell like a prom dress. Loved seeing PARAMUS, I live in the next town over and am there all the time. I dont think I totally understand SPYRING.... I prepare financial statements and deal with assets all day, maybe I overthink. Great Thursday puzzle... a little over my average time. RIP Joe DiPinto, I just read about his passing. I feel like a "knew" him, always nice to see his humble posts.
Hey All !
Took a minute to figure out how in tarhooties I was going to get the long "-" clues with no directive. Hmm, says I, I guess I'll just solve around until it somehow reveals itself. I had COMET in, thinking that was it for that answer, as COMETs often seem to be a source of change for people. Remember Heavens Gate in 1997?
Took me to figuring out the NE, getting NOVA, and was finally able to see that the lower _ANCY would be the continuation. That got me to get 1A, already having _YOURENGINES in, to see STAR. Then revisited COMET, to figure out the third WORMHOLE thingie.
Gee, took a minute to explain!
Too bad there wasn't little vortexes (is it vorticies?) animation at the circles when the puz was completed. That'd been cool.
Not bad fill, a lot of Theme to maneuver around. Question, though. Why isn't the symmetric of WORMHOLE a Themer? Yes, I'm happy it has an F, but the puz follows the symmetry rules until that. Strange.
Anyway, nice to see something original. Unsure if something like this has been done before (probably), will have to see if @Lewis knows.
Happy Thursday.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. I agree with easy-medium but I don't really like to think about crossword puzzles in those terms. For me it was an appealing theme, very well constructed, with generally clever cluing throughout. Now for the "buts." As a credentialed classicist, I was peeved at the clue for 27D. The clue as written—with "art" coming first and "life" second—refers more immediately to the Latin translation, "ars longa, vita brevis," than to the Greek original, attributed to Hippocrates. But I guess "English translation of a Latin rendering of a Greek aphorism" would be a bit wordy as a clue. While I'm listing peeves: 57A [Depositing checks with one's phone, say] is commonly referred to as "online BANKING" or "mobile BANKING"; I have never heard it referred to as HOME BANKING. And back on my classicist jam, it seemed to me a bit clunky to clue NIKE at 59D with [Figure in the Louvre's "Winged Victory of Samothrace], since the "Victory" of the English title of the work is merely a translation of NIKE. It's a bit like using ["My Lady" in the Louvre], say, to clue LISA. Maybe okay for a Monday? That would not be the only regard in which this puzzle feels like a Monday with a Wednesday theme.
So first of all, there are no possible scenarios where calling a Chrysler K-car a "classic" won't get you beaten up. Anti-K-car-ianarianism is real and in America. I didn't know Chrysler is still around.
I ended up working from bottom to top to gather crosses on the lower unclued entries so I could figure out which wormhole went where.
Fierce skirt. TOO TOO TUTU.
Are we gonna get a visit from the youth pastor for putting Jesus in the puzzle? The phrase O JESUS MOMENT brings two different images to mind.
❤️: SPY RING. WORMHOLE. STAR, COMET and NOVA across the top. LOCKJAW.
Propers: 7
Places: 2
Products: 3
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 (30%)
Recipes: 2 (beta)
Funnyisms: 1 🤨
Tee-Hee: BREST. And thanks @Tom T from yesterday for finding the armory of diagonal arsery. You are the A**MAN.
Uniclues:
1 Line up frat boys for a high score.
2 So I don't understand why this doesn't just sink.
3 Why space is fuzzy.
4 Springs aunt Betty from the hoosegow despite nearly being out of gas.
5 Eat a popular bagel.
1 TILE IN-APP BROS
2 STEEL SHIPS GAB
3 ALPACA WORMHOLE
4 RUNS BAIL ON LOW (~)
5 STOP ASIAGO YEN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: One crazy over trouser snakes. SPEEDO EELS MAD.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At @Mike in Bed-Stuy - sorry folks I meant so say Thursday theme.
As with all crossword clues, the clue is not the definition of the answer. It is one possible representation of the answer. If there exists a quartz-filled rock that is also a GEODE, the clue works and nothing more is implied.
How is GAB a gift?
I echo @kishef’s concise summary for my feeling about the puzzle. The thing I really liked was figuring out the gimmick which allowed me to actually complete the puzzle, and according to the app’s ever present timer/statistics it announced my time was 16 minutes faster than average! (People…that doesn’t mean much for me because I solve drinking coffee and talking to my husband).
Now. @Conrad. The saying for YEARS was Gentlemen, STARTYOURENGINES. Today, it is Drivers, STARTYOURENGINES. Just pointing that out because my first thought was FLAG at 1a for the Indy 500 “directive.” And yeah buddy…you BETTER obey the yellow and red directive…
It’s a fun puzzle about worm holes. Is no one here a fan of science fiction? You enter in one side and pop out on the other in a different location. It’s a worm hole, not that complicated. I enjoyed this science themed puzzle
@Alice - SPIES are often referred to as “ASSETS” (as in having “assets in country/on the ground”).
So a SPY RING is a group of that type of “asset”.
I hide my marijuana in a really wonderful hole I dug for the purpose. It's a TIPTOP pot pit.
I figured the circled letters must spell something, but I didn't have time to figure it out as I was AT ROTC training.
Unabridged Maya Angelou title: Still I Rise, ORISIT.
How did the Spanish woman explain why she was dancing with her diacritic. "I'm waltzing my TILDE."
I loved this puzzle. Joy and relief when I got the gimmick. Thanks, Kareem Ayas.
Can someone explain ANI as “Small change in party parity?”
I liked the WORMHOLEs. My favourite WORMHOLE movie is Contact with Jodie Foster. Based on a novel by Carl SAGAN.
I didn’t understand it at all. I kept looking for the circles to connect to each other somehow and then couldn’t figure out why the theme answers were so nonsensical. I came here to figure it out too and still had to read some comments to understand. I hate themes like this. Thursday is always some BS grid that’s harder for me than any other day even if the non-theme answers are easy.
“ Three astronomically themed answers in the top row continue from one circled square to another to form a longer answer because... I honestly don't know.” Hmm maybe it’s because they’re trying to construct a puzzle with a trick and a million other tricks have been done before. It’s a puzzle with some space-themed answers and wormholes that transport you to another part of the grid. It’s a perfectly fine stunt for a Thursday. I don’t get the review.
this feels half-finished puzzle. as noted, 2 of 3 completions are standalone phrases. whilst i dislike circled-letter spelling gimmicks, the R-T-A-O-T-C is catrot? artcot? tactor? something of letters. i expected more polish than “are the wormholes in place? good enough. now on to the next puzzle”.
@SusanA 9:44 AM
You add an I (the letter I) to “party,” which yields the word “parity.”
It would be really, really helpful if I knew what a WORMHOLE is and how it works.
Question #1: Can a WORMHOLE, whatever it is, go in any direction and end up anywhere at all?
Question #2: Does a WORMHOLE -- one that's (seemingly) represented by two letters in one square -- leave it's second letter in the original square or move it to the empty square at the beginning of the completing phrase?
It's all so confusing.
Luckily, I solve on paper, so for me it doesn't matter. I actually had left the "T" of START YOUR ENGINES in its original square and had done the same for the "O" of COME TO JESUS MOMENT. But then I moved the "C" of VACANCY to the empty, unchecked square. I realized that I had also left the "C" in its original space.
On an app, I probably would have been awarded a DNF until I corrected. On paper, I decided I'd solved the damn thing and didn't care all that much where those three letters were meant to go.
A very confusing puzzle that I didn't thoroughly understand but which gave me a nice tussle and which required me to use my little gray cells. I enjoyed it. Now off to read about WORMHOLES.
From Wikipedia: "Wormhole, solution of the field equations in German-born physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity that resembles a tunnel between two black holes or other points in space-time. Such a tunnel would provide a shortcut between its end points." Not much to it. The wormhole is a portal between two pairs of circled numbers.
Once I realized the theme answers each had an Across and a Down entry, it became easy to figure out which circled letters had to go where (Nancy: not two letters in one circle, but two circled letters per theme answer). Then, reading what a worm hole is made the puzzle much cuter and cleverer. Once I understood it I really appreciated it!
Hated
Surprised at the displeasure toward the theme. I agree with Eli that having the "receiving" wormholes as unchecked squares seems random and unnecessary, but I liked it otherwise. LOCKJAW looks tremendous with all its Scrabbliness, and the Ys are in interesting places (i.e., not always at the end).
Second grid with mirror symmetry in the last three days. I prefer this to Tuesday's teacup.
The portal idea reminded me of a Patrick Berry puzzle called "Teleportland" which he made for a national puzzle convention held in Portland. It's probably at least ten years old, and I think it's still available on his website. It's complicated and very hard -- one of those puzzles that, when you've finished, you're just astonished that he thought of it at all, let alone got it to work. One of his greatest ever IMO.
The letter i (an i) is added to party to spell parity..
It was very easy here, but delightful because Kareem created a puzzle that felt three dimensional. That's fresh! Bravo!
I was apprehensive about reading comments this morning because I figured most of the brainiacs in this crowd would love this theme. Looks like many did, but I feel somewhat comforted by the fact that there are others besides me who weren’t thrilled with it. With a nod to Tuesday’s theme, this one was just not my cup of tea.
I’m not a space enthusiast and only vaguely know that a WORMHOLE has something to do with it. So not only did the revealer not help TOO much, but the reference to each “PAIR” of circled letters led me into a rebus mindset. This was confirmed by the fact that STA(RT) made perfect sense at 1A. Then exacerbated by the fact that I had MAG for CIG at 5D which made my epiphany a MOME(NT). Again, perfectly logical. Then at 10A, I had nothing anywhere in that corner but was thinking along the lines of CAB(LE) or maybe SAU(NA). Anyway, I had a plan. Clearly it didn’t work.
But beyond my frustration with the circles and wondering WOE those dangling squares were supposed to be, the rest of the puzzle was TIPTOP. I haven’t heard tetanus referred to as LOCKJAW in decades and HOME BANKING sounds almost colloquial, when it used to feel so very modern to pay our bills by phone. These days, I think of it as online banking or E-banking and that seems like EONS AGO. Must be the AGE GAP. It gets bigger every year.
@Susan (9:44) I liked that movie too but probably would never have watched it had Jodie Foster not been the STAR. Had no idea it was based on a novel but now I’m going to make a point of reading it because I’m curious. Thanks for the suggestion. Oh, and it’s probably already been answered but … adding an “i” to the word party is a small change which makes it parity.
wuba luba dub dub !
Easy-medium mostly because it took me a while grok what was going on.
A tricky sci-fi theme with an ASTRONAUT at the center, liked it but I did try to make the circled letters do/into something to no avail.
Not much to comment on in the Hidden Diagonal Word HDW) world today, although yesterday's HDW TOGA appears today as an Unhidden Vertical Answer (43D). Otherwise, there was a 4-letter hidden diagonal ILLS (begins with I in 15A) and, beginning at 29D (PTA) we have POT moving to the SE and POT's semordnilap TOP moving back to the NW. All in all, the HDW experience today was pretty much one big OOF (the O in 44D, STOP).
If you are a fan of ASIAGO, have you given EONSAGO a try? Just wondering ...
Didn't get the Happy Music and, after a bit of searching, couldn't locate the problem. Turned out I had a GAg "gift" instead of the "gift" of GAB. Didn't read the clue well and should have come up with BREST. Sigh.
@egsforbreakfast 9:39 AM
"I'm waltzing my TILDE." OMG. LOL. 🤣
Nice theme mcguffin. I had some trouble figurin out what the hole it was up to, but once I realized that the circles spelled out COT-RAT, it all became clear to m&e.
staff weeject pick: ART. Lofty clue, plus it was sorta a partial anagrammic revealer to the COT-RAT theme.
best SUSword: HOWRU.
some faves: SYNAPSE. LOCKJAW. SPYRING & its clue. ASTRONAUT. E/W puzgrid symmetry.
Thanx for sharin yer space-time with us, Mr. Ayas dude. And in only 73 words. Far out.
Never knew before that wormholes involved unchecked squares; learned a new secret of the universe, there.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
this one's also fulla worms:
**gruntz**
Wonderful creation. Learned what WORMHOLES are. Took some work to hook up the phrases. I don't know why I didn't enjoy it more.
Eli whiffed his comment.
First, thanks to all who have pointed out the elegance of the WORMHOLEs and their placement - something I hadn't appreciated, given my lack of understanding of what they are (hi, @Nancy). For example, I'd interpreted the circles only as signaling some trick or other and not as representing holes or openings for a tunnel - cool! I also was slowed down by thinking the first of the three theme phases was just the one-word STAR[T] and the second COME TO god MOMENT. So the Down that started with ?JE had me flummoxed. Only when pattern recognition got me YOUR ENGINES was I able to sort it all out. I liked SPACE appearing in SPACER and the central position of SYNAPSE, which connects two of the tunnels.
@Lewis, thank you for reminding us of Kareem's previous puzzles. I remember THE SAURUS - terrific joke!
@Bob Mills - I agree with you about that "each pair" clue.
@Mike in Bed-Stuy - I had the same reaction to HOME BANKING. To me it sounds like putting money under the mattress.
I’m with the group that got thrown off by the reference to a pair of letters and went fruitlessly rebus hunting. Ah well, that took some of the fun out of completing the puzzle, but in retrospect it’s a great construction. No problem with the WORMHOLE theme—well done!
I liked this one. It would have been perfect if the down parts of the themers made sense with the circled letter included, but that would probably have been impossible. It took me too long to figure it out: which letters were "paired?" And the S of ASTRONAUT looked like a B in my sloppy hand-lettering. But that made it all the more rewarding when I finally got it.
Wormholes are pretty common in science fiction. Since faster than light travel really is impossible, writers have to invent something, and they're a common choice. I once went to a lecture by Stephen Hawking, in which he first explained how they were generated by black holes, and then told us that if we hoped to travel through one we would be disappointed because the gravitational forces would reduce us to plasma.
@Southside -- one-named performers go way back, but they used to have longer names, like Liberace or Hildegarde in the days of my youth.
@Mike in Bed-Stuy, thanks for explaining the origins of Ars longa, but what is it in Greek? I can't take the suspense!
@Roo, I guess you could relate FLAGGING to planting a U.S. flag on the moon, or else to the Indy 500, but either would be a stretch.
Flew through most of this, struggled a tad with COMETOJESUS, but finished in quick order, only to find a truly careless misspelling of SAGeN. Imagine finding an error two squares from the end - thank heavens I wan’t competing, except against myself.
I really enjoyed this one! Found the trick very fun to figure out, and loved the spacey partial answers at the top, ASTRONAUT in the middle, and the Space Invaders-y grid art.
HOMEBANKING is a straight up bad answer and most of the fill was ho-hum, but so what? Such a good time.
STAR....Oh am I staring at you and knowing in my heart that YOUR ENGINES must follow somewhere. LOCK JAW and its J!....It can't be in the empty slot #21. Oh, wait! there's another empty slot in #23. Could that be where my ENGINES go? YES! It fits. Move along. I got the COMET epiphany and wondered if some sort of explosion was going to occur on earth that might take out some dinosaurs...I've got a JE in #21. COME TO JESUS!!!! followed by its MOMENT!. This is becoming fun.
I wanted (badly) to find out what the theme was doing. I bounced around the globe. I got WORM HOLE and wasn't sure what it meant. So worms leave holes around something or other. Back upstairs. I have STAR COMET and NOVA. Can those be ASTRONAUT related? Does SAGAN have something to do with this mystery? CANCY? Who are you and what do you have in common with the others? I'm pretty sure CANCY is correct because, well, it has to be NO VACANCY. CANCY left me in the dark.
A sit back and stare fest once done. I did not understand assets being a SPY RING. UVA? That's a grape said by a SENORA. I had no idea what the green light meant to Gatsby... SYMBOL? Hah! I had saloon at
first.
I enjoyed figuring out the theme and there are some neat words here... I liked SPACER ASTRONAUT and EONS AGO. TIP TOP SYNAPSE, I'd say.
Agree 100%, LOCKJAW is a fantastic answer.
@egsforbreakfast Thank you for a much appreciated laugh! You're a gift to the blog!
About the Oprah, Uma thing…. Anne Bancroft has a brilliant take on the same idea:
https://youtu.be/WdagPyHgfFg
Enjoy!
I loved the wormholes! The second half of the answers go whooshing off into space and reappear through a magical ring. While comets and astronauts and Carl Sagan float around the cosmos. This was a really fun puzzle. The reviewer asks, why this gimmick. I reply, Why any gimmick? It's a puzzle. It exists to be clever and zippy.
I didn't find it easy at all. I was mystified and confused, and thought I would never figure it out. Even when I found WORMHOLE, it was not clear how it worked. And then, gloriously, it was! I rate this is the best puzzle I have finished in a long, long time.
So color me delighted.
Haven’t you ever heard of “the gift of gab”? Assigned to one who can’t keep his/her mouth shut.
Not for me :(
@Nancy….thank you for letting us know about Joe D. I am an avid reader of the Blog and consider all the Commentariat friends of a sort. I will miss his contributions.
I'm surprised nobody has yet mentioned RIFTS as yet another themer to go along with ASTRONAUT, SAGAN, WORMHOLE, NOVA, STAR, and COMET - and the very clever SYNAPSE connecting two of the tunnels (nice catch @Carola).
Really enjoyed this puzzle!
By far, the best thing to come out of todays puzzle was the Bert and Ernie blooper clip!
I got the gimmick pretty quick mainly because of the uncrossed squares (21, 23, 55) which had to be "special". But I didn't even notice the astronomy themed STAR COMET NOVA group until after I hit the revealer.
Re the uncrossed squares, they are a kind of "singularity". And, if wormholes are produced by a black hole which is a physical singularity... it would have been even better if BOTH ends of each wormhole were uncrossed. Then you could even skip the circles!
That was great: thank you.
At first I didn't like the puzzle theme but after reading all these entries I can appreciate it a little more.
Turns out those three, top row answers were the key to the whole thing. Oh well!!
This puzzle is the very first time I've ever heard a Chrysler K-car referred to as a "classic" automobile. Those cars were bland compact family sedans with four-cylinder engines. Sure, they sold a ton of them back in the 80's when the country was desperate for inexpensive American cars that got decent gas mileage, which allowed Lee Iacocca - who had recently been fired by Ford - to temporarily stave off Chrysler's impending bankruptcy. But "classic"? Not in my understanding of the word.
The “gift of gab” is an idiom.
Certainly not my fave. Not in my wheelhouse. Not only do I know nothing about WORMHOLEs, I have never heard of a COMETOJESUSMOMENT. And “each pair of circled letters” made no sense to me. How are they “paired”? They seem randomly placed to me. Buy I guess that’s a wormhole thing.
LOCKJAW. Haven’t heard that in a lot of years. SPYRING held me up for a long while. Very cleverly clued.
I liked TOOTOO just because it sounds goofy.
Well, the space nerds have had their day. Good for them. Maybe next Thursday we could have something earthier.
@Carola. HOMEBANKING = putting money under the mattress. Very funny.
@Gill. Until you mentioned it I didn’t even see that the top row was STAR, COMET, NOVA. Impressive.
What @Sailor 2:34pm said about KCARS. Classic, no. Less than mediocre, certainly.
I’ve been doing the Times crossword for 50+ years. I really miss Will Shortz!
What a god awful terrible puzzle. There is so much garbage here, I don't even know where to begin. HOME BANKING is not a &#(% thing. NYT puzzle has become so horrible.
Never. And I’m 46.
took me a lot of crosses but i thought it was really fun.
really fun today.
Never grokked the gimmick, never cared about trying to find it. This feels like an A.I. version of crossword
I always love your posts!
Thanks for posting. Brilliant!
Challenging, at the SPACE[R] station, because in all my 84 years, I have NEVER heard of a "COMETOJESUSMOMENT." The north central was almost totally inscrutable to me, even after I got everything else. All I had was the W of LOCKJAW (luckily, a gimme with my medical background). I finally, in desperation tried ONLOW, and was able to work out the rest of it. SPYRING was also very hard to parse. "Assets?" Wow. I guess, within the dictionary of espionage, it connects, but geez. Super-tough clue.
Lots of space stuff; like! The WORMHOLE visits STAR, COMET and NOVA, as the ASTRONAUT observes--and my hero & namesake Carl SAGAN writes about the trip! Eagle!
Wordle par.
I have never heard of a "come to Jesus moment". Is that a televangelist thing?
I figured out one out of three; that's better than naught.
Would have liked to see a sandWORM like in the movie Dune running down 42D to balance out the theme pattern.
NO LYE
YOUR NOISY ENGINES please us,
YOUR NOVA RUNS like A STAR,
NO need TO COMETOJESUS
TO beat A COMET OR KCAR.
--- ERNIE EPPS
Oh cmon, COMETOJESUS has been around much longer than my nearly 69 years, probably more so in the Bible belt, but I think also in at least one Clint Eastwood movie, among other pop culture locales.
Wordle birdie.
Well, I had no idea that WORMHOLE was even a thing. And it's not anyone's fault but mine that I could only count five circles, so could not figure out how they could pair up. Though the only thing I could think of for the neon sign was no vacancy, I didn't get it because I only had the A in 10A and _A-CY in 55D, didn't see that my no vacancy was there. I had STAR, but thought the T in COMET went with STARTYOURENGINES, didn't understand at all what was happening. I didn't dislike it, but it totally didn't work for me. And except for ASIAGO, my whole upper right was empty. I can usually do these things, but this wasn't even close to easy for me. I had nine words not completed, and three of the circled squares empty.
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