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Plunder, archaically / SUN 12-15-24 / Old-fashioned trinket shop vendors / ___ Clan, iconic hip-hop group of the 1990s / Fog and haze generated for a theatrical production / Opened or closed like an eye, in film lingo / Actress Creel of "Saved by the Bell" / "Penn & Teller: Fool Us" airer / Connecticut coastal town near Stamford / Popeye's witchy foe in early comics / Actress Creel of "Saved by the Bell" / Role for Jay Silverheels
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Constructor: David Kwong
Relative difficulty: Medium (if it takes longer than usual, it's because the puzzle has so many moving parts to keep track of, not because it's particularly hard)
- Max ERNST (54A: Painting stolen from 21-Across)
- Francisco GOYA (92A: Painting stolen from 33-Across)
- John Singer SARGENT (13D: Painting stolen from 35-Across)
- Edgar DEGAS (63D: Painting stolen from 53-Across)
- Frida KAHLO (20A: Painting stolen from 64-Across)
- Claude MONET (8A: Painting stolen from 71-Across)
- Georgia O'KEEFFE (94D: Painting stolen from 77-Across)
- TITIAN (4D: Painting stolen from (101-Across)
- Joan MIRÓ (93A: Painting stolen from 105-Across)
- Salvador DALÍ (110D: Painting stolen from 116-Across)
The answers from which the paintings were stolen:
Word of the Day: John Singer SARGENT (13D) —
- EASTERN STANDARD TIME (21A: Winter setting in New England)
- "GO, YANKEES!" (33A: Bronx cheer)
- BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (35A: Capital on the Rio de la Plata)
- BODEGAS (53A: Neighborhood grocery stores)
- HOOKAH LOUNGE (64A: Bar with hashish pipes)
- FROM ONE TO TEN (71A: Common scale range)
- SMOKE EFFECTS (77A: Fog and haze generated for a theatrical production)
- REGISTERED DIETITIAN (101A: Health professional focused on nutrition)
- STEAM IRON (105A: Household appliance that makes a hissing sound)
- "MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB" (118A: Classic nursery rhyme)
John Singer Sargent (/ˈsɑːrdʒənt/; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Capri, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. [...] From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for its supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life, Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century. [...] The exhibition in the 1980s of Sargent's previously hidden male nudes served to spark a reevaluation of his life and work, and its psychological complexity. In addition to the beauty, sensation and innovation of his oeuvre, his same-sex interests, unconventional friendships with women and engagement with race, gender nonconformity and emerging globalism are now viewed as socially and aesthetically progressive and radical.
• • •
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| [Here's today's constructor, David Kwong, taunting me w/ a Nighthawks selfie; I forget precisely why he sent me this, but he knows I love Hopper and have never seen Nighthawks (a perfect painting) up close, so ... taunting me, as I say. Kinda surprised that a HOPPER was not among the stolen art today] |
As flashy as the longer answers were, I also really admired the discreet three-letter hiding place for DEGAS. You usually go looking in the longer answers for theme elements, so it was a delightful surprise to find one hiding in such a small, seemingly out-of-the-way nook of the puzzle. It's also impressive how dense the theme gets in places. The missing DEGAS, KAHLO, O'KEEFFE and TITIAN squares are all clumped Really close to one another in the eastern part of the grid. The whole premise was KOOKy and zany enough to win me over. Yes, the grid was fussy, and yes, the fill gets a little strained in parts, but unlike most Sunday themes, this one never felt tedious, or thin, or like I just wanted it to be over already. Inventive and ambitious and kind of maniacal—it's so rare to get a theme worthy of Sunday's giant (I'm sorry) canvas. This puzzle reminded me of Liz Gorski's iconic Guggenheim puzzle, which is about as high a compliment as I can pay any Sunday puzzle. Was this my favorite Sunday of the year? The bar is low, it's true, but ... maybe. I'll have to check my spreadsheet, but maybe.
[35D: Motel proprietor in "Psycho"]
[59D: ___ Clan, iconic hip-hop group of the 1990s]
- 19A: Fertilizer compound (POTASH) — definitely a word that crosswords taught me. I remember getting it as an answer the first time and wondering what PO-tash was (it's POT-ash). This was back in 2008. At that time, I said that POTASH sounded like "some kind of Eastern European casserole," or else a contraction of the slur "poor white trash." But now I know better (I still don't really know what it is) (the clue back in 2008 said [White, granular powder], so I've at least got a visual)
- 50A: Role for Jay Silverheels (TONTO) — TONTO is also a giant synthesizer that played a really important role in music history. It's the instrument at the heart of Stevie Wonder's amazing string of solo albums in the '70s (credited with the amazing bass line on "Superstition"). Genuinely iconic. Also, literally massive. Still waiting on my synth clue for TONTO.
- 60A: Popeye's witchy foe in early comics (SEA HAG) — As with POTASH, I think I learned this from crosswords too. According to wikipedia, "because she is a woman, Popeye cannot physically attack her." Huh. OK. Can't really picture the SEA HAG. Hang on ... OK, here we go. Here she is, tormenting poor Wimpy:
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| [Alice is way scarier than her name sounds] |
- 95A: Opened or closed like an eye, in film lingo (IRISED) — I know "iris in" and "iris out" but don't think I've seen IRISED before. Still, not hard if you know those other terms.
- 7D: Title for Manchin or Murkowski: Abbr. (SEN.) — you know you're going too fast when you've got a three-letter answer starting "S," you see the clue starts with "Title...," and you just reflexively write in "SIR."
- 16D: Duffer's obstacle (POND) — so not TRAP, which was my first guess (a "duffer" is an inexperienced golfer)
- 18D: '60s campus activist grp. (SDS) — the farther we get from the '60s, the less likely these letters are to make immediate sense to solvers. If I google [SDS] now, I get something called a "Safety Data Sheet" for nearly all my hits (!?!). Students for a Democratic Society was a major political-activist student group that rose to national prominence in part for their organized opposition to the war in Vietnam.
- 24A: Like the Beatles' "Yesterday," key-wise (IN F) — that's "in the key of F," not "infinite," "information," or "infantry."
On now to Part II of the Holiday Gift Guide. Last week, I focused on physical gifts, such as Adam Aaronson's Crossword Calendar and Jeff Sinnock and Desirée Penner's crossword book, Name That Tune: A Year in Music—Crossword Puzzles for Music Lovers. This week, I just want to highlight some puzzle subscriptions for the puzzle-lover in your life (or yourself, why not?). These are all puzzles I subscribe to myself.
First is the AVCX (American Values Club Crossword), which has built itself into an indie puzzle juggernaut over the past few years, putting out six (6!) puzzles a week now, including two regular-sized crosswords, two smaller crosswords, a trivia puzzle, and (god bless them) a cryptic crossword, all while broadening and diversifying their editor and constructor roster and offering a tiered subscription pricing system, so that people without much disposable income can still afford to subscribe. These puzzles are consistently fresh and fun, and when people ask "what alternatives are there to the NYTXW?," this is always the first suggestion out of my mouth. Check out their sample puzzles here and subscribe here.
The Peter Gordon puzzle empire is also very much worth checking out. The weekly Fireball Crossword is especially great for those whose tastes run toward the more challenging puzzles. Imagine Thursday-level trickiness with Saturday-level difficulty. There are frequent meta-puzzles and puzzle contests as well. Fireball is a puzzle I've done consistently for ... yeesh, over a decade now? Very highly recommended for the experienced solver. 2025 subscriptions available now.
On the somewhat more accessible side (Tuesday/Wednesday level) is Peter's Newsflash Crossword—a remarkably up-to-date biweekly crossword focused on people in events in current headlines. These are a great way to brush up on or learn new names from the worlds of sports, politics, pop culture, etc., or (if you're like me) to find out what has been happening in the news since you stopped paying close attention in order to save your sanity. The Kickstarter for the 2025 Newsflash Crossword ends very soon, so subscribe today. Like, right now.
Lastly—I forgot last week to mention a really lovely puzzle store called Pavel's Puzzles, run by puzzle designer Pavel Curtis. This is more crossword adjacent than crossword specific—his store features puzzles of many different types—but they all look truly creative and beautifully crafted, and many of them run toward the kind of wordplay that I know you all love, so if you're looking for a unique and affordable gift for the puzzle-lover in your life, his site if very much worth checking out.
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| ["Punana Split"—come on, you know you pun weirdos are gonna love this] |
OK, that's all for gift suggestions. Let's do a few Holiday Pet Pics (you can still submit pics today, but after today, please, no more submissions—my Inbox is flooded!)
Again, I have to wonder what some of you all think I mean by Holiday Pet Pics. Navarre here is, what, possessed by the Christmas Demon?
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| [Thanks, Corinna] |
I mean, the least you could do is slap a Post-It Note on your cat. Look—instant "Holiday" relevance (this is Cherry):
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| [Thanks, Jenny] |
Or throw a hat on your dog... (this is Joy)
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| [Thanks, June] |
Here we have some proper Holiday pics, of the mischievous cat variety. Nessa, no! The YETI (4) is not a toy!
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| [Thanks, Isabel] |
Not sure what Leo got up to, but the damage appears to have been done, Merry Shredded Presents Day!
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| [Thanks, Brad] |
Finally, here's Donut, furry companion of crossword constructor Trent Evans, watching ("watching") a classic Christmas movie. Yippee Ki-Yay, Donut.
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161 comments:
I still do not understand how painting and artist are exchanged for one another. A painting is not an artist, and an artist is not a painting.
tc
Slog. Awkward. Painful. Ambiguous instruction. Couldn’t wait for it to be finished. Sigh!
I learned something today. I learned that I'm "not a fan of paintings / artists / museums." I've spent some lovely time in a number of museums enjoying art works, but the puzzle "quickly gr[ew] tiresome." Didn't like it at all.
Solving on a tablet was irksome since the rebus function clearly wasn’t working.
I spent ten minutes floundering at the end (read: post solve) typing clue answers as follows:
49-down On dry ground
ASHO(MONET)E then
ASHO(RMONET)E before finally landing on a simple
ASHORE.
In other words, there was no joy in the solve unfortunately.
Perhaps the least enjoyable puzzle I’ve done in 5+ years of NYT crosswords. I would get an answer like Buenos Aires Argentina but have no idea what clue cross-referenced it, what part was “stolen”, and wtf with a random letter dropped in. Tedious. Plus I know next to nothing about art.
Well.... it was a bit of a slog for me. But I did finish it. Having the final answers where the paintings were removed become utter gibberish because of the "IWASFRAMED" letters being inserted was kind of inelegant--I want the final answers in the grid to make some sense even if they don't match the clues. But in the end, getting the magic music the first time when I finished this grid was pretty worth it, and having the IWASFRAMED message figured out by then made me feel pretty good. I did not remember KAHLO as a painter so that was my hardest area--and the southwest, where paintings and answers with missing letters were intersecting willy nilly. Anyway--got 'er done. Certainly would never have had a clue without the note. Thanks, David, for the challenge!
same unease, but I think it was legit. It's common to refer to a painting by its artist, as in, "I just spend $148,000,000 at auction for a Degas." (and, yeas, I surely did))
Reading the instructions gave me a headache.
Completing the puzzle gave me a smile.
Just missing the happy little trees.
The instructions should have included a brief apology for the fact that to make this puzzle concept “work”, non words sadly had to be created to sit inelegantly on the grid as you complete it.
The scope and magnitude of this one is epic. Like Rex - I’m typically not impressed by architectural feats - I’ll back off that today. Not perfect and at times a slog with the cross referencing - but he SARGENT find alone is classic.
SRV
Overall fill reached the awkward stage with AXLED and others but they were not the stars here. That huge center stack of 5s is wacky. Loved the artists.
IRIS
Enjoyable craziness on a Sunday morning. HOOFUNGE indeed.
Deer Tick
My favorite Sunday in a very long time!
This was one of the most enjoyable puzzles I've done in a long time. I love rebuses to begin with but this is a real tour-de-force. I don't think you have to be an art aficionado to know most of the painters and to shoehorn these into theme answers ...Go Yankees?! Are you kidding me?!...and finally to have the replaced letters spell out a double-entendre , "I was framed", my jaw still hurts from dropping. I printed a copy for my wife when I saw the write-up...she hasn't done a crossword for years...and when she finished, said, "I'm back!" Wow, David, just WOW!
Completely brilliant puzzle that absolutely required me to figure out the theme in order to finish the last three themers.
Sunday puzzle of the year, for me (noting that we have another couple of weeks to go in the year).
I knew all the artists but HATED this tedious, pedantic, boring, slog of a puzzle. Aside from the ambiguity of the instructions, the resulting word salads (EASTIANDARDTIME?!) were so UGLY, it should be a crime to have them in an art-themed puzzle.
I hated it so much! Just slogged through it, lots of googling. Eventually worked out the theme but was getting extra letters, before I finally saw the note (I don’t know how Rex gets a notification to look, is that a setting?) Didn’t get the music at the end after finally working out the F in fems and didn’t even search for the mistakes, just hit the check puzzle button.
I hated, hated, hated this puzzle. Just an unpleasant slog, constantly having to backtrack to figure what on earth was missing from which answer. When solving electronically you can’t easily find which artist goes with which janky answer. The center is a sea of boring 5-letter gunk. AXLED? Both OLLIE and OLIOS? There are unchecked letters like the secret “A” in MODELAS (could very plausibly be MODELTS — you can only figure this out at the very end with the hidden phrase). Also, the abbreviation isn’t “CRES”, it’s “CRESC”. I have been a musician for over 40 years and never once seen “CRES” in a score.
For me, it did that. It told you that something was being removed that properly belonged there to be replaced by something foreign that did not belong there (a piece of a clue)
This puzzle was great fun for me. Like Rex, my hopes were not high after reading the “about” note (more than once!) and still not understanding what was happening, but as muddy as the concept seemed to be the execution was a thing of beauty! There was one tiny imperfection - the stolen painting at 118A started with the same letter that was “left behind,” so the answer looked like it was just missing ALI instead of DALI. That’s not really even an imperfection, I guess, it follows the same rules as all of the others, just looks different and made me double-check for an error. When that’s your biggest complaint, and the theme is finding artists with weird letter combos like OKEEFE and KAHLO in legit longer answers, it’s a winner.
Maybe my least favorite puzzle I’ve ever done. I’m sure it was a feat to make, but I still don’t even understand why arbitrary letters are replacing certain ones (I know it spells I GOT FRAMED eventually but before you grok what it’s supposed to spell those are just random letters). I got frustrated even reading the fourteen pages of instructions and didn’t understand a word of it. I’m glad people liked it but man was this not on my wavelength at all. Oof
Did any one else think Hunter on high (5) was BIDEN?
This obviously wasn’t for me - I don’t enjoy the “sleuthing” aspect enough to offset the tediousness and unease at filling in a grid full of gibberish. I can see where some would be up for the challenge, but just not my cup of tea. So this one is easily in the top five of the least enjoyable grids of 2024 for me.
I solved it, but I didn’t like it. Disliked the ugly non-words in the grid, and had to keep notes on a piece of paper in order to find the ‘clues’ (added letters). Lots of tedious checking back and forth. Too fussy for me.
Finished it OK, but without enjoying it. The paintings haven't been stolen, the artists have. And even after getting the trick, I didn't know what to do with the extra letters in each theme answer. Now I realize they spell IWASFRAMED (like a painting, get it?). But the letters are so randomly placed in the grid that it doesn't make any real sense. A theme for the sake of a theme, I'd say.
This was an example of a puzzle that either shined or stunk depending on the solve setting. On the NYT subscription site, there were no instructions, so I spent a good amount of time figuring out the trick of taking out an artist and leaving a letter (which I could get by the cross). Plus, clicking on the clue for the artist lit up the trick answer, but not vice-versa. Plus, at the end I had a bunch of letters with no clear idea of how to connect them - should I try to connect them to make a picture? So ,not satisfactory for me despite an obviously stellar puzzle. Wonder if there's a way to include instructions as part of the puzzle grid, so the instructions shown up on any site.
RP, thanks for the tips on other subscription sites. Always looking for good puzzles
I love art and artists and couldn’t believe how much I hated this puzzle. It’s Sunday. I want a cup of coffee and sit down and just finish a well done puzzle. This isn’t it. Between having to keep track of multiple entries at once to nonsensical words to poor solves. Oh, and let’s not forget the helpful “hint” that made such little sense and was poorly written. This was miserable and zero fun at all. I pity a novice solver trying to get this one.
I just couldn't be bothered. Isn't a Bronx cheer a raspberry? This puzzle is for people who are really into constructing. For those of us who are not, it was a terrible choice. I saw what was going on with Titian, but I just didn't care. An absolutely joyless solve.
Wow. And the comments are wide-ranging, eh? I needed some help, plus I did this on my computer, which I do only rarely, being a pen & paper person. Thought I had everything but messed up SLOE with ALOE, and only figured this out with the "check puzzle" function. OKEEFFE was the hardest for me to squeeze in. I thought this was pretty impressive.
I've grown to appreciate art much more than I ever did as a kid. One of our favorite board games is Masterpiece, in which you roll dice, move around a board, get to bid for paintings, sell paintings, etc. But what we do is, we add to the collection of paintings in the game with postcards purchased at art museums.
Same!
I found this fairly easy and it was fun to find the painters (for a while, I was looking for actual paintings). But it was exhausting and when I was finished I didn’t have the energy to go back and find the hidden answers in the extra letters (and figured I’d find it here). I WAS FRAMED was indeed a nice extra touch! Unusual when an impressive architectural feat is also a fairly fun solve.
I didn't mind the conceit or execution at all, as the puzzle's fill/clueing was generally on the easy side (apart from a few WOEs such as ESME and FLAM) to compensate for the mechanical complexity . What I did mind was the tedium of "making a list", towards the end of the puzzle of all the stolen letters and "checking it twice" to ensure I was putting letters from IWASFRAMED in the correct spaces (particularly an issue with THEC[W] and MODEL[A]S). You're welcome, that's the one nod to Christmas you'll get from this confirmed Grinch.
I liked it a lot, and I like very few Sunday puzzles, so I appreciate this one very much. It was kind of an anti-rebus, because it was a rebus where the letters that would have to fill in one square didn’t go in the square but were actually spelled out somewhere else. The biggest problem was the NYT puzzle app. There should be some way to highlight or circle squares you notice but there isn’t. (The best you can do is use the pencil mode to get a slightly lighter font). If you were doing it on paper you would just circle the anti-rebus squares and then “I was framed” would jump out at you. But being unable to do this it is then very hard to read the phrase because you spend so much time finding where the next letter in the phrase would be. And since the letters that go in those squares are otherwise uncrossed you end up putting in Model T instead of Model A and wondering what went wrong, especially if you didn’t read the note (like I didn’t). I’m not asking for pre-circled squares. It’s a nice puzzle to find them. I’m just asking for a better app.
I got all of the artists because they were fairly well known and the stolen locations came together from there, but I cannot for the life of me understand why those random letters were inserted into each stolen location!! Yes they spelled out the catchy little phrase at the end but it made zero sense while solving and completely ruined the puzzle for me.
Finished the frustrating puzzle with a “error.” The Ford Model A came after the Model T. Argh.
thank you. I kept yelling "MONET (etc) IS NOT A PAINTING" as I solved.
It’s a rare day that I willing break my streak because a puzzle is so unpleasant that I can’t bear to finish it. This is one of those days. As so many others here have noted, it was ugly, fussy, and filled with gibberish. I’m happy for Rex and others who enjoyed it, but I just can’t be bothered. Awful, awful, awful!
I find it interesting that this puzzle was so polarizing, with some people loving the creativity and some people hating it. Count me in the latter camp, as I found this to be perhaps the least enjoyable puzzle I've ever completed. I think it wouldn't have been so bad if the clues that were missing a piece highlighted where to find the missing piece. But when I couldn't fill in one of those, I was searching around the entire puzzle for a clue that I had sometimes already filled in with crosses. That, plus the unchecked boxes that formed "I WAS FRAMED," made this just a complete slog to the end.
There is aways unpleasure for me with paired clues like – 122D, “With 9-Down, legendary Giant” / 9D, “See 122-Down.” Multiply this by 10 for today's them, and count me among the "joyless slog" crowd. Like Rex often does, I filled in most of the grid with downs and acrosses that avoided the theme answers, to spend less time troubling myself about these. Didn't even notice (solving on paper in tiny boxes) that MODEL T was incorrect!
Not even word salads — letter salads!
DNF Waif instead of Naif at 35A because i had the wrong arbitrary extra letter I guess? And the D is the extra letter at 118A even though a D is the letter that fits there? Terrible puzzle.
Until the end of this holiday season I'll be singing (in my head) the classic "Silver Bells" substituting Silver Heels.
TONTO means "fool" in Italian and Spanish, so in the Spanish version of the show "Toro" was used instead. The Italians just said F*ck it and stuck with Tonto.
This was impressive!!! Hard (took a while) but felt very rewarding. Did not see how o’keeffe would ever find a home.
If you don’t know REAVE, then you probably haven’t seen “The Reavers” (Steve McQueen rulez!).
María tenía un corderito.
Gah. Nightmare puzzle.
Propers: 29 {HOLY MACKEREL?!!}
Places: 4
Products: 10
Partials: 12
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 58 of 140 (41%) {On a Sunday. Sigh.}
Funnyisms: 0 😫
Tee-Hee: FEM BRA.
Uniclues:
1 Take a blurry photo of a pond.
2 Biography of legendary prop comic.
1 SWAP MONET TACTICS
2 MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB: A LIFE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The number of nanoseconds required for his fist to smush in your face. SPAR HANG TIME.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was enjoying this for a while but by the end hated it, trying to make sense of nonsense like FROROTEN, then hunting down every odd-seeming word and see whether there was an artist somewhere in this giant grid whose name would make it make sense.
nits — FEMS instead of the more common femmes, CRES instead of the standard cresc.
If (e.g.) 77-across was highlighted when you got to 94-down, the reverse should’ve happened as well, with an indication when you’re on 77-across that this is one of the answers that has a piece stolen, and therefore is going to look like nonsense in the grid.
Not having crosses for the 10 “missing painting” squares unless you hunted down and wrote out the ones you got and tried to fill in the blank — absolute annoyance to do when solving on your phone. Solving on paper would’ve made this a lot more enjoyable.
To top it all off, why would the art thief leave a message saying “I was framed” at the scenes of the crime? You’re in the process of committing a crime, you haven’t been accused of anything yet! Seems more like something you’d say in an interrogation room, after you’ve been arrested.
Just like a quality piece of art, this puzzle is clearly divisive. Seems like you love it or hate it. I, for one, hated it. On to the next!
When I went to the Art Institute of Chicago , I went up to a security officer with the intention of asking her how to get to Nighthawks. I didn’t even get a word out before she cracked a lovely smile and gave me some directions, then said “I know what painting you want to see”. Honestly the best part of my trip to Chicago, which was overall fabulous anyhow.
There were no rebuses. You were replacing the area where you wanted to use a rebus with a single letter. The instructions were somewhat intricate, perhaps somewhat unclear…but there were instructions.
I liked the idea of the theme but never did figure out what the hell to plug in for the squares with missing letters so the puzzle would complete. Especially since none of the missing letters fit the down clues. Granted I didn’t read the note, but I still wouldn’t have figured out what was going on. I had to hit reveal square on most of those.
Love it or hate it…knew that was going to be the feedback today. I struggled and struggled…and the final victory was sweet. Great puzzle!
Dear lord, @Rex, your comment section is unbearable. The people here either think they’re Leo Tolstoy or just COMPLAIN! There’s no in-between except for the uncommon short comment … I get that you are passionate about crosswords, so am I, but if you like them, don’t complain so much! They make these puzzles for YOU. They make them so you can have a break in the morning to do something you enjoy, and it’s very rare when someone has something nice to say. Are crossworders really this snobbish? @Rex complains quite a bit too … I don’t really care, though, that’s why we’re reading. Humor, snark, “Rex” is playing a character (at least, I hope he is). These people, however, are just old folks whining about overly-modern or slightly bad fill. “I remember when this puzzle was run by Margaret Farrar! God, could she edit.” It’s SO annoying! I’ll keep reading, but I’ll stop scrolling beneath @Rex’s signature from now on. This rant probably sounds hypocritical, but I’m no higher on a moral level than people who complain about what others do for their enjoyment. “Here, I made a puzzle for you guys! Hope you like it!” “This fill sucks. Slogged the whole way through. Disgusting.” Like, WHY? At least @Rex has some backstory and gives me some emotional connection, but Margaret from New Jersey does not. This isn’t every commenter, there have even been some enjoyable ones, but please stop complaining. There are other crosswords. In my opinion, the New Yorker has some of the best themeless crosswords every week from Monday through Wednesday, go complain about those for a while. Or maybe try staying current with pop culture. It’s really not that hard, just watch TV. Listen to music. Try something new. Have fun.
Model A was not Ford’s first.
That rarest of all puzzles: a tour de force of grid construction that also left me, the solver, with plenty to do.
Too much to do, perhaps? :)
I think this is rather brilliant and I wanted to really love it deeply and ardently. But it was SO much work. All that cross-referencing to keep track of and, well, I simply didn't try to. I counted on my memory, such as it is, to remember the names of the artists I'd filled in already -- along with my knowledge of the art world, such as it is, to think up artists with shortish names I hadn't yet filled in. I then applied those names to the answers I was trying to fill in, but couldn't. And it worked everywhere!!! Everywhere but the OKEEFFE to give me SMOKE EFFECTS. There, I couldn't get past the fact that I had aCTS at the end and thought it was some sort of aCT I'd never heard of. Terrific embedding of OKEEFFE!
All the embedding is absolutely terrific. The "Aha Moments" are NUMEROUS. Oh, did I smile when ERNST came into EASTERN STANDARD TIME and when SARGENT came into BUENOS AIRES ARGENTINA. A masterful job by David and an impressive job by me in (almost) coping. But it's not this Kwong puzzle that I'd like to see as POY. It's his A STAR IS BORN puzzle. It probably took him 1/20th of the time to create that as to create this one, but my solving experience, while challenging in that one too, was not nearly as dizzy-making and labor-intensive as this one. Still, if this one gets nominated, I'll certainly understand the enthusiasm behind it. Now off to read y'all.
Very clever, but I agree that to find the ultimate revealer (I was framed) was just too much work for a morning. And then some of the answers ended up wrong, for example Penn & Teller network--no idea. Not to mention Model A (from the 1930's) instead of Model T (way before).
Finally, "Like a car's wheels"??? The poor axle has just never gotten any respect; everybody asks "who invented the wheel", but nobody asks who invented the axle. In short, it is impossible to have a wheel without an axle. Yin and Yang.
I always hate it when the solution requires you to read the mind of the people making the app in order to “finish.” As in, I put each artist’s name as a rebus in the squares where the clue letters were, which I think is an obvious way to do things. How am I supposed to know that I’m to ignore that and, instead, prioritize the Down letters? I had a completely correct grid, but the app said I had errors. And so I started to replace those rebuses (rebi?) with the Down letters—and, oddly, halfway through that process the app decided to call my grid correct and then turned the squares yellow. WTF?
Hey All!
This puz took me forever! Amazingly, have heard of most of these artists, even with my perennial unsophistication. Got stuck on the musical scale, though, as reading it as one word, MONETFROROTEN (mon-at-fror-a-ten) and scratching the ole head as to what in tarhooties that could be, unaware I didn't have the MONET in the right spot. I thought the first R in FROROTEN was the missing letter.
Had a DNF, because Ford's first cars were MODEL T'S, not MODEL A'S. Had the answer as BUENOSAIRatINA, because MODEL T'S. Nevermind that the T was in SARGENT, the Ford clue is outright wrong. After toiling with this puz for over an hour, it was an ignominious way to get a DNF.
Model Ts were made from 1908-1927, whereas Model As started in 1927 (1928 Model Year) through 1931. Wrong, bad clue. You might say I (WE) WAS FRAMED.
Liked the puz. Didn't like it took me over an hour, but a tricky puz is wont to do that. Nice idea and execution, David. I have seen your videos of the public trick puzzles you construct, and can only say "Wow".
Who is going to step up and say whose wrong clue that was? No way to lawyer that clue, it says First cars made by Ford.
Anyway, have a great Sunday, y'all. I'll get over the wrong clue eventually. 😁
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
When you read the clue for the painting, the app lights the entry that it was stolen from. So yeah, you can jot that down. But how annoying! Just light the painting when you read the entry. My app didnt give me any note but i did see the info and that was enough. It was confusing at first what these random letters were that replaced the artists. I figured they must spell something but never bothered to find out what.
Well, I solved it using the iPhone app with rebuses (unnecessarily, as it turned out), and still got the happy music.
Just to let you all know that I couldn't be bothered to go back and look for the message. That would have been a huge pain in the you-know-where. I knew I'd find it in the comments without expending any effort at all. And so I did. I WAS FRAMED is absolutely delicious -- and I enjoyed it every bit as much as if I'd tracked it down on my own.
Ha
A different critique - that middle diagonal of 5 letter answers was a total slog. Nothing fun, just getting through it all.
There are 2 different Model As, and the first one is the first car Ford made
what a delight to see you mention Pavel Curtis - I met him when he was at Xerox PARC and started LambdaMOO (which still exists!) His puzzles are uniquely challenging.
I loved this puzzle! BTW The NY Times app accepted the use of rebus squares in this puzzle as correct. I also liked finding the jumbled answer from the down letters at the end. It made a Sunday puzzle more interesting!
Did you receive the instructions in whatever medium you were solving in?
Surprised at the hate for this puzzle. I thought it was brilliant, HOF worthy with the secret message at the end. YES, it was a pain in the butt maneuvering around and I did put it down and picked it back up after a headache. (Hard copy). I then went to the NYT app later on and filled it in to be sure I got it right. I did, but it did not "Congratulate" me. I "rebused" the squares like E/MIRO for STEAMIRON/GETSWISE . But it did not acknowledge that as being correct. I don't track streaks, never have, so I didnt really care. I see there were complaints that the puzzle included artists name and not the works. All the better for me - I couldn't name all that many works but I do know artists names.This was a puzzle that, when I finished, I showed my family. That is my benchmark on how good the puzzle really is.
I got no instructions? Just the title “Art Heist”. I got the theme just fine and I knew there was a substitute letter in the spot where the artist should be BUT figuring out what that letter was depended on knowing the cross perfectly. I mean, MODEL A vs. MODEL any other letter? I did not know that. Etc. usually there’s another word to work with. That was a look up moment.
I knew I was going to hate this puzzle the moment I saw the instructions essay. The only instructions I want to see for a crossword puzzle are "Read the clues, enter the answers". I don't even think this disaster qualifies as a "crossword puzzle". Better luck enjoying next Sunday, I guess. What a waste.
Having learned to drive in a Model A, which was the modernized Model T, I was puzzled by the lack of a grand finale when I completed the puzzle—seems I wasn’t the only one. Was ambivalent about progress through the solving process—emotions were mixed between frustration with the complexity and interest in getting to solve the whole thing. Overall, enjoyed it.
This grid contains ARTE Johnson, clued from his Laugh-In days. Evan Birnholz also has him in his weekly Sunday grid over at the WaPo (clued with a reference to one of his movie roles). There are more dupes between the NYT and WaPo than I would have expected before I started noticing them, but it’s pretty rare for PPP to be duped like that. He was pretty well-known to my generation, but I’ll bet there are a lot of solvers who have never even heard of him.
The instructions are on both the desktop and mobile versions of the site, though on mobile you have to tap a little "i" (for information?) icon to check every Sunday.
Franklin really ought to have said a half truth makes a WHOLE LIE.
I wish the puzzle had included a cross reference on both parts of the special clues. It was obviously not supposed to be a hurdle to overcome, and it would have been much more user-friendly had the Across clues included a reference to the related Down clues. When I got to the clue about "Smoke Effects," it wasn't clear to me that that had had letters removed and replaced. I kept looking at it trying to decide if there was some sort of trade lingo for such effects.
is there an error here in 64 across?? why is there an "F" in "HOOFUNGE" but the answer is hookaHlounge?
did not enjoy.
For a crowd of commenters who have no trouble using Google to finish puzzles, y'all seem to forget it can also correct your self-righteous commenting errors. Ford produced a Model A, then the Model T, then another car which also used the name Model A; so just stop already with the complaining. If you can use Google to cheat on crosswords, surely you can use it to check yourselves before you call out a constructor on something about which he is entirely right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_A_(1903%E2%80%9304)
I loved it. - the theme idea, the construction marvel, and the fun of restoring the paintings to their museums. A wonderful Sunday.
There are many reasons that people stray, but, personally, ISINTO have something to talk about with the priest in the confessional.
I'm thinking of marketing a kit to let you sew up your wounds at home instead of going to the emergency room. It'll be called SUTURE Self.
What did the art thief say to his getaway driver? Step on DEGAS!
I have a detailed plan for obtaining some small, hard mints. I call it my TicTac TACTICS.
I wasn't expecting such a fantastic puzzle when IRISED this morning. You're an artist, David Kwong.
Like many others, I got caught by the terrible Model A clue. People who know a little about early automotive history will know that the T came before the A. People who know a LOT about early automotive history, or people who googled it afterwards like me, will know that there was ANOTHER Model A that was actually the first car made by the Ford Motor Company. They made less than 2000 of them. But that wasn't Henry Fords's first car, just FMC's.
Without a cross, this is a frustrating clue.
WNTEES?(33A). Bronx cheer?
Love that Rex's comments included the picture of Ralphie from "A Christmas Story." "I WAS FRAMED" after all the effort that went into solving this thing landed for me smack dab in the neighborhood of "Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine." Now I know how Ralphie was feeling on a new level.
Lukewarm on the theme (for reasons others have mentioned), but the fill was just awful. Not one but three duped “at”s (ATA, CHAFESAT, SETAT)? And two “a”s (ALOT, ALIFE)? Not to mention OLIO, OLLIE, AXLED (?), ALOES (plural!) CRES instead of CRESC, FEMS instead of FEMMES, and legions of three-letter junk. Almost stopped solving in disgust.
Also used pencil mode to highlight the special squares, also found it very unsatisfying.
The original Model A was released in 1903, five years before the model T was released.
I do the Sunday puzzle to be entertained - hard, easy, whatever. Not to be tortured. I almost threw it against Nancy's wall. It was overly ambitious, convoluted & impossible (for me) to even want to "try" to solve. It put me in a bad mood & I wish I had gone back to sleep like "cutie Donut."
Worst puzzle of the year.
This was an enjoyable solve. Fitting in all of BUENOSAIRESARGENTINA and hiding OKEEFFE in SMOKEEFFECTS - outstanding. I got a smile from GOYANKEES. I WAS FRAMED was a much better payoff than “Remember to drink your Ovaltine.”
Overall I liked it, but SNERD crossing DARIEN is a Natick and a half.
One of the trickiest puzzles in a long time. The corner spaces spell PITA and it was a PITA (pain in the @ss) to solve. (just kidding!) I loved it.
Found it very hard to solve on a tablet. Particularly irksome was that the related clues were only highlighted none way. I kept have to search for the “painting stolen from line x”. Why didn’t the highlights work both ways?!
Didn’t help that I had Franz LISZT, never having heard of or having forgotten LEHAR.
I'm surprised so many people really liked this. I grew more frustrated and confused as time went endlessly by... what square was it again? This would have been easier on paper as I could just lightly shade the necessary squares or something.
And then, at the end, could not get the "message" because of structural problems. The "squares" are uncrossed, so of course I had Model T with nothing to tell me I was wrong. And I didn't know what "THE C?" was (we don't get that channel here). And I've never seen / heard the term FEMS so I put in HERS. So what I had for the message was: I ? T S H R R M E D.
This was a good idea, I guess. Sure didn't work for me, though.
@Anonymous 10:04 and others with similar comments re the "extra letters" They were not extra. Every one was part of the down answer. 5D IS INTO; 12D THE CW; 49A ASHORE; etc.
It COULD get confusing when the letter needed in the down answer was the same as one taken : DEGAS/ ESTE
I had very mixed feelings. I both really liked and really disliked the puzzle for the reasons others have given. I always hate clues that reference me to other clues and there so many in this puzzle and they were so far apart
But it was kind of fun and interesting finding the artists names onceI saw what I was supposed to do. I was looking for
paintings names at first, but yes it is perfectly legit, because very common, to refer to a painting by the artist's name.
Always problematic to have crosses that are only meaningful in one direction, for some reason I was certain that tv station was called THE CB
Why doesn't the NYT Games app give a notification if there's a note? If I had known the letters spelled something out I would have had a much better time with the whole premise--as it was, I thought they were just random, and because they're not shaded on the grid or anything I couldn't pick them out to read the message once I saw there was one. This puzzle was an annoying solve that could've easily been less annoying with slight changes to the appearance of the grid.
I'm surprised how many people here didn't like the puzzle. I'm with Rex on the awesomeness of hiding Georgia OKEEFFE and SARGENT in a phrase.
My most difficult areas were trying to parse the scale FROM ONE TO TEN because FLAM was not a thing, to me. I checked the crosses - yes RAVI, yes OMAR, yes ASHORE. That FROMOTEN was a theme answer finally dawned on me as I had seen MONET hanging around somewhere already.
Then there was the HOOKAH LOUNGE crossing FEMS and REGISTERED DIETITIAN crossing COOKIE. Yes for seeing KAHLO and TITIAN elsewhere, no for making the connection to their respective theme partners because I never thought to go back and reread those clues to get the cross-reference.
So I struggled and failed to go back to find I WAS FRAMED. I think this puzzle should have only been done on paper so one could circle things on the grid - easier to follow that way, for me anyway.
David Kwong, wow, great job!
On the tough side time wise for me mostly because of the what @Rex said about all the “moving parts”. I initially tried to solve this without paying attention to the theme instructions. That got me through three quarters of the grid but unfortunately I needed to theme to finish. I needed to find the artists and plug them in to make sense of the BUENOS AIRES ARGENTINA and FROM ONE TO TEN answers. That process consumed major amounts of nanoseconds.
A impressive feat of construction and a not entirely unenjoyable solve…i.e. put me in the “kinda liked it but boy what a slog” column.
In a class by itself. WOAT. Absolutely WOAT. Gimmick piled on gimmick piled on gimmick piled on errors. I. Do. Not. Understand. Why. NYT. Published. This. Mess.
As I recall, Jay Silverheels was a member of an indigenous people of Canada related to the Algonquin in whose language TONTO means "brave and handsome warrior".
Count me in with the crowd who found this quite tedious. Too much jumping around and checking.
I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for three decades and this was the worst, least joyful puzzle I’ve seen them publish. Chose not to finish - a first for me.
Gee, I reckon all the good, bad, and ugly about this epic rodeo has already been well covered. Soooo ... M&A'll skip all that.
M&A solvequest steps:
1. Use the printed puz version.
2. Ignore the crucial puztheme-related note. Mainly cuz I initially thought it was just part of the constructioneer's bio.
3. Fairly early, GETWISE to ERNST gettin splatzed into EASTIANDARDTIME. Except that extra "I" concerned, even puzzled, the M&A.
4. Decided to explore the bio some more, and saw the note. Circled the extra I of concern, and was concerned about it no more.
5. Said to self: "Whoa ... how do U know which answers are gonna need them artists to be splatzed into em?!?"
6. Sussed out all the italicized "Painting stolen from" clues. Circled the clue numbers for all the answers that were gonna be the "stolen" victims. Also wrote in the margin the clue number of the applicable artist name answer.
7. Proceeded to solve puz, now happy as a warped Dali watch.
staff weeject pick: BO[S/DEGAS]. primo themer respect for the wee words.
Thanx for the different puztheme, Mr. Kwong dude. M&A likes different. And this was a whole SunPuz-sized heap of different.
Masked & Anonym007Us
Anyhoo...
"Tack on the Blanks" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A, trustin that "A Monitor" message from yesterday.
Ditto!
Wow, just terrible fill. Three duped “at”s, two duped “a”s, pile upon pile of three and four-letter gunk, and some next-level tortured crosswordese (AXLED? ALOES? IRISED?). Say what you will about the theme (I found it occasionally impressive, mostly tedious and ugly), but even a great theme isn’t worth such inexcusably bad fill.
It does. The I icon in a circle blinks when there’s theme/note. I tend to check it every Sunday, just in case.
really cool puzzle not to nitpick but the end reveal though sorta funny should have been described differently in notes - "what the thief might say after being accused of these art heists" it wouldn't have given anything away just made the final reveal a better edit.
It felt Medium, but slower than normal due to all the cross-referencing and having to hunt for the "stolen art" squares.
I thought I'd just solve the whole thing and then come here to see what the secret message was. However, I didn't know the last letter in THEC_ or the first one in _EMS. And then I also had to find out that MODEL Ts was wrong (the fact that the W in THECW and the A in MODELAS are "extra" letters isn't great, but at least they're technically "checked" by the secret message).
I looked all over the grid for mistakes before using "check puzzle" to discover that my "extra" squares were all wrong. The software I solve on doesn't allow for multiple solutions, and the only valid one had the artists' names rebused into the themers. I figured that I wasn't actually meant to use the rebus function because, you know, the whole point is that they've been stolen from the theme answers.
Just for the hell of it, I decided to copy the grid onto a spreadsheet and highlight all the theme answers and artist names, to see at a glance how dense the theme stuff is. Unsurprisingly, the theme density is EXTREME and it's insane that such a construction was even possible. Of course there's a price to pay and it's SDS OLIOS TOYMEN ALIFE OREL x LEHAR SNERD x DARIEN REAVE CRES etc...
I do respect the boldness of picking names like SARGENT and especially OKEEFFE instead of crosswordese-y and easy to hide artists like ERTE or ARP.
Jacke, thank you for your comment. I had no idea that I could tap the “i” for more information
Total slog. I figured out the artist thing (these, however are, artists, not paintings, which make the instructions opaque at best), but the substituted letters for artists in the squares make no sense. It would have, if there had been, say, a letter in the artist's name that matched the missing letter, but in most cases, it wasn't. Hated this.
would have been a lot better if the clues matched up. staring a clue and needing to ctrl+f to see if it was funky one was so annoying.
I solved this on the NYT site, and the instructions were prominently posted in a big grey rectangle right above the grid. First thing I saw when I opened the puzzle.
No, but that's very funny.
Except that the movie title is "The Reivers", spelled like the title of the Faulner novel that the movie is based on.
Not a huge fan of the puzzle, so annoying trying to remember where stolen artists (not paintings) went. Axled is ABSOLUTELY not a word, no idea about "cres". Is "fems" something lesbians say, I have no idea but it sounds passe and reductive? Was also slowed down by Model T actually working with "ArgenTina" part of clue. Liked "reave" because a long time ago I looked up the meaning of Faulkners "The Reivers" and it's a cool old word (also the bad guys in the great Firefly series / Serenity movie)
There is nothing more common in this modern world than blog comments that one finds unbearable. The solution is not to read them.
See @Kitshef's response above. He is correct.
100%
Thought it was cute but, like many others here, would have *really* appreciated some way to make note of which answers were part of the theme. I ended up leaving the "evidence" letters blank, but that made it hard to discern between the theme and squares I needed to fill in.
When I saw the constructor’s name I was really hoping to love this puzzle, having attended a wonderful stage performance last summer in which David Kwong delightfully combined magic and crosswords. Instead I found myself almost screaming in agony by the time I gave up and opted for “reveal puzzle” in the app.
Much of the pain could have been avoided just by making the artist names light up
when the “stolen from” entry was selected, as the latter did when the artist entry was selected. As it was we faced these gibberish strings without even being alerted that they were theme material. Some app solvers reported having to make notes on paper to keep track of things—that should never be necessary!
The fact that in some cases the “left behind” letter in the down answer was also contained in the “stolen” name, at the beginning or end no less, and in some cases not, was extremely annoying and frustrating for me.
Finally, no one seems yet to have pointed out: Ford made the enormously successful Model T (1908) before the also very popular classic Model A (1927). There was a much less widely distributed car also known as Model A made by Ford in 1903-4, but that is really specialized knowledge, completely unsuitable for an answer that is necessary to complete the mystery phrase.
Better overall editing decisions were sadly missed here!
webwinger
Wow. A Sunday-sized Thursday puzzle. Flirting with disaster, there. Trickier than most recent Thursdays, but sloggier, too. I am not a fan of architectural feats by constructors, but this is the exception that proves the rule. It took David Kwong to pull this off. Impressive, if slightly tedious.
A bit of a painful slog not knowing if a given word had art stolen from it, but I prefer it being harder than the even-more-painful gimmes we get these days with too much hand-holding.
Plus…HOOFUNGE!!! Love it.
Wow, who is this reviewer and what did s/he do with Our endearingly grumpy Fearless Leader? Rex isn’t nearly as much fun when he’s being nice. Here’s just one example of something for which the real Rex would chasten a constructor: three of the artist’s names weren’t broken up in the long themers (GOYA-NKEES, BO-DEGAS, and DIE-TITIAN). That’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have noticed but for OFL calling it “inelegant.” I can just hear him now, “Don’t try to work it into your grid if….”
BODEGAS - what a fun word that I never realized contained an artist. Now I wonder if BO DEGAS is Ed’s cousin.
This is one of those “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” puzzles. All the cross-referencing was off-putting to say the least, but I like a good whodunit so I persevered. I solved on paper, which was good and bad. The bad: I always use the ink saver option - not at all helpful today with all the looky-loo* clues because the tiny numbers were so faint. The good: I could make notes on my clues to highlight the location of the theme clues and underline the cross-referenced clue. I also circled the “clue letter boxes” so I could find them easily, which came in handy since I had no idea what letter to put in THE C- or -EMS until I decoded the secret message. Fortunately I like making notes because this is a fussy way to solve a crossword puzzle.
I did have one wrong square because I put in ALERT TEsT and by that point lacked the interest to run the alphabet to find X marking the spot. AsLED looked wrong but AXLED is hardly high quality fill. See also film lingo IRISED, REAVE, TOYMEN, KOS, KMS, CRES, ALOES, TELE, AAA, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
OLIOS is today’s object of the side-eye, and also my etymonline word of the day. olio (n), savory medley dish of Iberian origin, 1640s, from Spanish olla, Portuguese olha, both from Vulgar Latin *olla "pot, jar." With the common mistake of -o for -a in English words from Spanish. The sense was transferred from the pot to what went into it. Extended sense of "any mixture or medley, a collection of various pieces" is from 1640s in English.
Too bad COOKIE, which should make us all happy, was clued as “Online tracker.” Ugh.
The “aloud” part of the clue for MUSE (will she respond to the call?) confused me, as MUSings are often silent.
I like to think I WAS FRAMED is referring to the art pieces themselves being taken from their frames for easier escape. I WAS FRAMED, but I’m free at last. Sorry, Martin.
Noteworthy puzzle partners:
FAIR NAIR
SHAM FLAM
ATA AVA ANA
SLANG WUTANG
NAIR NADIR
CDS SDS
BOS KOS
ISLE ASHORE
ELLSSILL
and rhyming crosses TRIAL/ISLE.
Speaking of A LOT of going on about nothing, I saw the clue “Oodles” and waited for crosses to see if it would be AtOn or ALOT, then a TON(TO) shows up right under ALOT.
LEHAR Vilja
*Looky-loo, where are you, Frantic Sloth?
Agree. Why couldn’t the clue have said “artist” instead of “painting”? And no info available on my app, and I don’t get the paper copy of the newspaper, so….. less than fun, and those issues could have been resolved by the puzzle editor. The puzzle itself was tricky but clever.
If you did reveal square it would show a rebus, when i revealed puzzle (because i was NOT enjoying myself) it changed those revealed rebuses back to single (highlighted?) letters. Get it consistent NYT...
Or you could simply google: “The original Ford Model A is the first car produced by the Ford Motor Company, beginning production in 1903. Ernest Pfennig, a Chicago dentist, became the first owner of a Model A on July 23, 1903;[4] 1,750 cars were made in 1903 and 1904 at the Ford Mack Avenue Plant, a modest rented wood-frame building on Detroit's East Side, and Ford's first facility. The Model A was replaced by the Ford Model C during 1904 with some sales overlap.”
Seems like a surfeit of anonymice today... missing LMS... many regulars also missing?
Did this one on paper but even so, too much cross referencing to be thoroughly enjoyable. And the ridiculous longs resulting from the extraction plus addition of random letters, whew. Ugly. And totally confusing when the random letter was the same as an adjacent letter...grrr.
Speaking of totally, shouldn't a half truth be a total lie?
Hated this puzzle. From start to finish, absolutely hated it. The hint made no sense. The resultant answers were nonsense. I hated hated hated it passionately. Oh, also, I hated it.
Totally confusing when done online. Did not follow the usual way the crosses are handled using the rebus key. I gave up and it ended my streak.
SUTURE self? LOL... you leave me in stitches!
@Coniuratos agreed. could have been anything. technical DNF for me. [since i solve on the website i could just run the alphabet until i got the happy music but, that's basically cheating.] my initial guess was SNERt/tARIEN because "snert" is a name i learned from crosswords. i think it has something to do with comics which seemed plausible for whatever this clue was, the names in which i did not recognize.
-stephanie.
i filled the empty squares with a rebus of the artist's name, which was accepted. so i could just scan for a rebus to see where the letters went and what i had left, but it was still very convoluted to look at. one of very few puzzles i had to pull out the scrap paper for.
-stephanie.
Me too. I’m getting so sick of these gimmicks. I just want to do a crossword puzzle. There should be another category of puzzle like this to purchase separately. Looks to me that many constructors feel compelled to come up with a gimmick than a truly clever puzzle. I still don’t get the solution and don’t even care.
@ChrisS "femme" is the counterpart of "butch", however i have never seen it spelled "fem" and found that really odd and confusing. [before i realized that was part of the theme answers, i thought about "kens" and was like...are we doing barbie and ken now, but the lesbian version? that would have been better, but alas...]
-stephanie.
This is strange to read the above two because I also solved it with rebuses, I tried it with just the letters first and didn't get it
Must've had one wrong still
Agree entirely. I understood what was going on pretty fast but hated every minute of it and actually threw it in the fire before finishing it and picked up a book. I’m not usually one for rash acts, but I’m so frustrated with the NYT. I don’t understand how it lost its way with Sunday puzzles. This one was designed for a small sliver of the puzzle world. More power to those who loved it, but for those who value entertainment, cleverness and a chuckle, the great days of the Sunday Times puzzle are long gone.
I gave up. And I am a member of MoMA, the Met, and the Whitney.
This is a great grid. I wish I had not gone out for drinks and smoked before I attempted it. It's a bit late in the evening and I am sleepy, but this puzzle is quite a trick. I'd savor it tomorrow if I didn't have a streak to maintain
Dash riprock.
I got the gimmick without the notes. It is still doable without them because for me the real crosses were mostly easy and the artists were all very familiar to me.
T
@anon 10:05 - I completely agree with everything you said. I have no idea why most of these complainers even open the NYTXW each day. Seems like they must be masochists.
BTW, loved today's puzzle even though it was a DNF because I couldn't comprehend the complexity. But it sure was fun trying!
I really enjoyed this one! I thought it was really clever and just the right kind of Sunday challenge.
I don't think I've ever agreed with Rex more on a puzzle review. I had the same reaction to the overcomplicated instructions, but once I got into it, it was a lot of fun.
I had a few other minor issues, though. Others have posted complaints about "AXLED" - it feels more like it's more word-adjacent than an actual word. Also, though I often see the phrase TEXT ALERT, I don't hear ALERT TEXT. It seems awkward. Maybe that's regional; I live in the MSP area. Otherwise a fine puzzle, if you're not impatient and have the time.
I definitely miss seeing Diana LIW's comments. She always commented later in the evening. It's been a few months now. Hope she's doing okay.
Came here to post for the first time ever and state how much I hated this puzzle. HATED IT.
My dog, whose picture is pending, is ORION. He gets into the puz 4 or 5 times a year. I don't even stop to think about celestial clues, they are almost all him.
Why on Earth would you clue Darien as a nothing town in Connecticut versus a very famous impenetrable gap in the Pan-American Highway in Panama?
I agree with you, found it extremely annoying.
Excellent puzzle. Took me a looonnng time to finish though
Right? The puzzle is for people who are into constructing. That’s a great way to put it. It’s kind of yawn inducing inside baseball. I mean… in addition to the fact that he doesn’t seem to care about the difference between an artists name and their paintings. It’s too cute, too clever. I’m sure the puzzle constructor had a great time making it and felt very satisfied after doing so. But tldr, wasn’t fun for me, I didn’t bother to finish and I normally do.
Paintings are conventionally, routinely referred to by the artist’s name, esp if that name is a big name. “The museum has two Kandinskys and a Klee.” Basic stuff. Weird to complain about it.
Completely missed the introductory note, but it literally told you what to expect right there in the clue? You knew it was an artist removed from the original answer, with the crosses you could get the artist in question’s names very easily and then it was just business as usual? Skip the gibberish, or fill in what you know (based on crosses), then come back once you had the artist.
Y’all seem to miss the fact that the clue says cars. Plural
What a cool idea! I remember playing that game when I was young. Going to go look it up now….
Will would never have allowed this project of a solve into his hallowed territory!
Having read so many complaints and criticisms about how difficult and frustrating it is to do what you could call 'non-traditional' crossword constructions online, using the New York Times app...
I have a suggestion.
The editor and app curator could simply include a 'heads up' notice (maybe a symbol) that this puzzle is best and most easily solved on paper.
That way those who want to race through the crossword, best their times, and maintain their streaks will at least have a clue (pun intended) of what to expect.
Wow, so much hate for a very clever, multi-layered puzzle.
I'm certainly not the first to say it, but COME ON: if you're going to have a big "Note" at the top of the puzzle to explain what's going on, at least have correctly explain things instead of misleading people! I probably would have liked this puzzle a lot more if I hadn't wasted a huge amount of time/mental energy trying to figure out where the 'stolen paintings' were until I finally realized it was the painter's names that were stolen. The theme also just does not make sense (I caught onto it, I mean doesn't make sense in that nobody would steal a painter's name).
Was it brilliant? Very much so! Was it a slog? Very much so! I got all the painter's names correct, ergo that's good enough for me. I don't mind an explanatory sentence or two telling me what's going on; I do not want to read a short story.
A rebus with another letter is odd to say the least. But, any mention of Max Ernst is great. His LopLop paintings of birds are a wonderful intro to his art. One of my fave painters.
EAGER MUSE
LEANNA OGLED him ALOT,
NUMEROUS TIMEs THE NAIF IS jolly.
She WON'T GET OVER TAPES she shot;
OMAR HA(DALI)TTLE OLLIE.
--- SEN. MARY BATES
DNBTF. Did enough of the east to get that KAHLO was 'stolen' from HOOKAHLOUNGE. Wasn't going to spend any more time on that. But yes, I have been to a HOOKAHLOUNGE - April, 2009, Moscow
Wordle bogey.
No notes nor shaded squares in my paper.
The Seattle Times print edition is 2 weeks behind on the NYT puzzles, and there were no notes included, so I just finished this one. Fun, but a bit frustrating re: the "extra/replaced" letters. Until I read here, I had no idea that there was a message with the replaced letters, because I didn't figure out that there were _replaced_ letters, I thought there were _inserted_ letters and that I had a bunch of weirdly off-by-one misspelled phrases. Erk. :/
Ford's first (successful) car was the Model T, not the Model A, the Model A succeeded the Model T.
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