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Korean dish similar to sushi rolls / TUE 4-22-25 / Stately French dance, or its accompanying music / Feature of the Brontë sisters but not the Brothers Grimm? / Person chosen by ballot / Beachgoer's take-along / What to try clearing if a webpage isn't loading / Venomous symbols of Egyptian royalty
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners
Relative difficulty: Challenging
Theme answers:
I have never in my life heard the phrase "GREEK ELEMENTS." That's pretty much my review of this puzzle, in a nutshell. I of course have heard of the classical four elements: earth air fire water. But I have never heard those four things called "GREEK ELEMENTS," perhaps because They Are Not Uniquely Greek? (see Word of the Day, above). I had that answer down to GREE- ELEMENTS and honestly didn't know what to do. I ultimately guessed "K" because, sure, those were "elements" to the (ancient) "Greek" people. Plus GREED ELEMENTS seemed preposterous, and GREEN ELEMENTS ... well, I won't say I didn't entertain that idea, as all the elements are ... natural? ... so ... "Green?" But no, no, gotta be GREEK. Now, if this had been a decent puzzle, then I would've been able to confirm that "K" with the cross ... which is what I did, kinda. That is, I thought KIM seemed more Korean than NIM as a starter for 44D: Korean dish similar to sushi rolls (KIMBAP). But as with "GREEK ELEMENTS," I have never in my life heard the term "KIMBAP." Kimchee, sure; Bi Bim Bap, mmm, delicious; KIMBAP? Nope, that one missed me. So ... phrase I've never heard before crossing phrase I've never heard before. On a Tuesday. Great. Worse, when I guessed "K," at the GREEK / KIM cross, I guessed correctly ... but the puzzle didn't give me the "Congratulations" message, so I actually tried GREED and GREEN LOL, and those of course didn't work, and at that point I was so annoyed at the stupid puzzle that I just hit "Reveal All" ... only to find that GREEK was right all along, but I'd stupidly spelled BAP as "BOP" and then forgotten to check the crosses. I know very well that she's IDINA, not IDINO! (IDINA and IDINO are pretty easy to tell apart: one of them is a renowned Broadway musical performer, while the other is a tell-all memoir from an animated prehistoric house pet).
The rest of the puzzle, I don't really remember. I know it was playing hardish even before I got to the GREEK/KIMBAP section. Onto the "things I've never heard of before" list you can add CAROLINA REAPERS. It's very possible I have heard of them before, but that info just left my head. I don't care about exceedingly hot peppers or Scoville scales or whatever. I like watching Hot Ones from time to time, but yeah, not really familiar with your hotter chilis. What's the "ghost" one? Ah, the ghost pepper holds the Guinness record for hottest pepper, but has since been "superseded by the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper in 2011, the Carolina Reaper in 2013 and Pepper X in 2023." (wikipedia). So there you go. CAROLINA REAPERS are a former title-holder. Sadly, it's all GREEK to me! Sigh. The only themer I really liked was BASEBALL PLAYERS, because I like baseball and because that answer felt right on the money in the way the others didn't. Well, CAROLINA REAPERS is likely right on the money, just not familiar to me. I've been over how badly GREEK ELEMENTS missed. And then SAINT PATRICK'S ... just sitting there without the DAY? Not really feeling that.
I wanted to elect an ELECTOR, not an ELECTEE (awful word), so that held me up a bit (23A: Person chosen by ballot). Did the usual stutter step at OCH/ACH (33A: German exclamation). As if the GREEK debacle weren't bad enough, I was not entirely sure how to spell DIERESIS, with the specific unsureness coming at the letter that was smack in the middle of ... GREEK! (the first "E") (37D: Feature of the Brontë sisters but not the Brothers Grimm?). Luckily, "A" was preposterous in that position, so I just went with "E" (the right choice). DIERESIS into GREEK into KIM BAP ... I've had pleasanter solving experiences. P.S. the DIERESIS is the umlaut-looking thing in "Brontë" that isn't an umlaut.
Other things:
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
- CAROLINA REAPERS (17A: Red Hot Chili Peppers)
- SAINT PATRICK'S (29A: Green Day)
- GREEK ELEMENTS (43A: Earth, Wind & Fire)
- BASEBALL PLAYERS (56A: They Might Be Giants)
The classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire, and (later) aether which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Angola, Tibet, India, and Mali had similar lists which sometimes referred, in local languages, to "air" as "wind", and to "aether" as "space"// These different cultures and even individual philosophers had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they related to observable phenomena as well as cosmology. Sometimes these theories overlapped with mythology and were personified in deities. Some of these interpretations included atomism (the idea of very small, indivisible portions of matter), but other interpretations considered the elements to be divisible into infinitely small pieces without changing their nature.
• • •
 |
| ["Better than I, TINA"—Booklist] |
The rest of the puzzle, I don't really remember. I know it was playing hardish even before I got to the GREEK/KIMBAP section. Onto the "things I've never heard of before" list you can add CAROLINA REAPERS. It's very possible I have heard of them before, but that info just left my head. I don't care about exceedingly hot peppers or Scoville scales or whatever. I like watching Hot Ones from time to time, but yeah, not really familiar with your hotter chilis. What's the "ghost" one? Ah, the ghost pepper holds the Guinness record for hottest pepper, but has since been "superseded by the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper in 2011, the Carolina Reaper in 2013 and Pepper X in 2023." (wikipedia). So there you go. CAROLINA REAPERS are a former title-holder. Sadly, it's all GREEK to me! Sigh. The only themer I really liked was BASEBALL PLAYERS, because I like baseball and because that answer felt right on the money in the way the others didn't. Well, CAROLINA REAPERS is likely right on the money, just not familiar to me. I've been over how badly GREEK ELEMENTS missed. And then SAINT PATRICK'S ... just sitting there without the DAY? Not really feeling that.
Other things:
- 4D: Edebiri of "The Bear" (AYO) — she's great, love seeing her name ... for now. But you can see how the puzzle's gonna overuse her and turn her into ENYA (or IDINA) real quick. I guess someone's gotta be the new ENYA, why not her? (Apologies to the old ENYA, who likely isn't going anywhere any time soon).
- 64A: One of the A's in AAA: Abbr. (AMER.) — so awkward to ask for the meaning of an abbrev and then have the answer be ... yet another abbrev. Hilariously, as I was solving, I couldn't remember any of the A's. I've been calling it "Triple A" for so long that the A's lost all meaning. "Triple A ... so that's ... A, A, A ... Triple A ... omg what do those A's even mean?" (American Aerobics Alliance, of course).
- 18D: Beachgoer's take-along (LOTION) — If the answer had been SUNTANLOTION, fantastic. Just LOTION? Less fantastic.
- 31D: "Their exact words were ..." ("I QUOTE...") — this phrase doesn't quite feel right without that "AND" in front of it. "Their exact words were—and I QUOTE—" etc. "And I QUOTE" is how the phrase is known.
- 41D: Nairobi is its largest city (KENYA) — congrats to the two winners of yesterday's Boston Marathon, both of them KENYAn. We'll probably never see John KORIR (2:04:45) or Sharon LOKEDI (2:17:22) in the grid, but just in case ... now you know.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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129 comments:
I agree with Rex. Fairly challenging for a Tuesday
Same experience as @Rex--trouble spelling DIERESIS, and I just ran the alphabet to get GREEK. Assn before AMER, but once I had the MA I knew it had to be MARPLE. But yeah.
Tuesday?
I found this much easier than Rex (unusually!) but also had the same green/Greek nimbap/kimbap dilemma. I also wanted an A in dieresis and I’m still not 100% sure it shouldn’t be diaeresis…
Rex didn't comment about the BRUH/BLAM cross, which is either a misprint or a clear example of Gen-Z's disregard for the English language (or is it Gen-X?). I thought the puzzle was mostly easy, though I had "diareses" (plural) instead of DIARESIS (because "Bronte sisters" is plural). I took French in school, and the slanted mark was called "accent acue" (acute) back then, not a "diaresis," which sounds like a rare eating disorder.
The clue for GREEK ELEMENTS landed with a thud for me. DIERESIS was my nemesis as well (I knew the Brontë babes had that additional punctuation thing, must didn’t know what it was called).
I enjoyed seeing AYO Edebiri stop by again - she’s one of the few (current) celebs who I actually like and follow - I’m a bit surprised that it’s taking her this long to become pretty much crosswordese. Hopefully season four will drop soon.
I work with a number of *elected* officials and they all refer to themselves as "electeds," which a) I like much better than "electee[s]" and b) kept me from finishing the grid (also had to cheat)
Unlike Rex and probably many of you I liked the puzzle a lot. I don’t normally do Tuesdays, but when I glanced at this site and saw the word “challenging” at the top, I went for it. I like a puzzle that’s an actual puzzle to me, and this fit the bill. I didn’t mind “Greek elements”. It’s true that’s not a dictionary name for earth, wind, air and fire, but it was descriptive enough and I did figure it out. It was more fun for me than some later week puzzles have been. And the theme is intrinsically fun, even if not always executed perfectly
Average-to-easy here, despite WoEs AYO and KIMBAP.
Self-imposed slowdown when I confidently wrote in 'poirot', confirmed by the 'auto' from AAA.
AES puzzles are sometime a bit 'out there'. I was surprised to see his name after solving, as the puzzle felt so ordinary.
I started with DIMSUM but the SUM part eventually turned into BAP because of crosses. This left me with GREEDELEMENTS which I assumed was some biblical reference. At this point, I was lost because I thought something else could be wrong. IDINO? Sure, why not? BROH instead of BRUH? That seemed likely, and so on.
Up and down solve, medium, overall liked it, nicely put together. Some of the answers just seemed a bit off: BLAM?
Saw Korean food and K_____, so filled in KIMCHI - had to go back when it didn't work and learned a new Korean food. Otherwise no rewrites
Aha. DIERESIS. Brain kept trying to figure out why women who write diaries was being spelled with an “e” instead of an “a” even though that itself was a disconnect. Proving once again that, at least until first coffee break, Tuesday is simply Monday warmed over.
Oh, and the ë in Brontë is basically equivalent to the modern 'metal umlaut' in the likes of Mötley Crüe and Blue Öyster Cult - it was an affectation adopted by the family just for how it looked, rather than for any pronunciation-related need.
A dieresisbus not an accent aigu, it is an umlaut, and the Brontë sisters don't have an accent aigu (é)
We all have different sweet spots. I didn't get any of big words at first. But got a lot of fill and Saint Patrick kicked. After that I just filled in Greek Elements with maybe 3 letters. That is the only thing I ever heard them called. What was hard was Bronte clue. I figured I was looking for whatever they call the little dots on top. But needed every letter.
It should be. Dieresis is the variant spelling. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dieresis Wikipedia also has the primary entry as diaeresis and Google search automatically corrects to it as well.
My favorite theme clue was [They Might Be Giants] because it was the least direct and it made me smile.
It sent me on a lovely rabbit hole, as I wondered about how that band came up with the name. Turns out it came from a 1971 film with the same name and that the film got the name from a Don Quixote passage about how Quixote mistook windmills for evil giants. (Wikipedia).
Maybe the best part of the Wikipedia piece was that there is a book about how many famous bands got their names, and its title is “Rock Formations”!
As for the puzzle, after I got two of the theme answers, there was great fun in guessing the remaining two. I also liked DIERESIS crossing GREEK as the former comes from the latter. It was poignant to see the lowly PEON in the bottom row. And every name in the puzzle was of someone who turns my thumb up.
This puzzle, BTW, is brought to you by noun-or-verb clues: [Converse], [Fill at a station], [Grunt], [Anger].
Your puzzle, Alex, got me smiling and exploring in addition to solving. What a splendid outing! Thank you!
My issue with KIMBAP wasn't that it is obscure but rather that the much more common spelling is GIMBAP which left me with GR_EGELEMENTS. Maybe Grieg did some composition on the 4 elements? Seemed very unlikely to be a clue on a Tuesday though.
Not like a “metal umlaut” at all, as the dieresis here is ~decidedly~ related to pronunciation
Weird ass puzzle - I liked it for the most part and as I typically do most AES offerings. I liked the themers - the spanners are the highlight. Overall fill was just odd enough to keep me interested.
Shovels and ROPE
Didn’t like the EARTH clue/answer repeat. Looks like I may be the only one who doesn’t know AYO. Agree there is some obscuria scattered throughout. Depressing seeing IRAS given the recent tank.
Enjoyable Tuesday morning solve.
She’s an Angel
Can somebody tell the masters of the great word list in the sky that SNL has sketches, not skits?
agreed... had some back and forth on Gimbap vs Kimbap - knew the word / food but couldn't figure out which spelling right away based on the cross~
"P.S. the DIERESIS is the umlaut-looking thing in "Brontë" that isn't an umlaut." - - is unquestionably the least helpful post script I've seen in my entire life. I must have missed that day/week/month/year of class.
TIL that MARPLE and Poirot have the same number of letters.
Last letter in: the M in BLAM (after Boom and Bang). Only then could I see AMER, which I dislike for all of Rex’s reasons.
On the other hand, no one today seems to be complaining about how easy the NYT puzzles have become.
did well time-wise with the puzzle, about a minute faster than usual.
I liked the theme, and ironically, I thought "they might be giants" was the biggest stretch of them all 😂.
red hot chili peppers for carolina reaper is perfect. I like regular hot, not insane hot, but I remember when the carolina reaper got popular. 🌶
❤️
happy to see my hometown (HOU), a poet (BORGES - i actually just bought an anthology of his work!), and an artist (RODIN).
weirdly remembered DIERESIS quickly, and I know KIMBAP, though it's often spelled gimbap.
❤️🩹
the 3 and 4 letter words didn't bother me, though I'm finally ready to admit that I don't like the word AVER. ever.
💔
but ELECTEE threw me (and i threw up), 100% GREEK ELEMENTS is absurd.
Deja de quejarte.
I didn't count the theme entries as Funnyisms because they're not really jokie. Honestly kind of a snoozer. I did write GREEK ELEMENTS in without a second thought, so I think it's a thing.
Aaaaand, I know you've been wondering if I would allow AHOY to float past without a Moby Dick update, but here's the deal, I am officially on the last chapter, 135 chapters and many of them were pretty rough sailing, and still it will come as a complete surprise whatever I'm in store for today. The whale has the upper hand right now having smashed Ahab's boat twice, and as a big ole passivist vegetarian-ish whale lover, I'm rooting for the fish. No matter how poetically Ahab speaks, I just don't vibe with him.
German crossword dictionary report: Frequent friends GESUNDHEIT yesterday, and ACH today increased our total vocabulary by 0. Still only need 10 words.
Epicly unnecessary clue for TSK. Nothing like abbreviating an abbreviation in AMER. BRUH was the biggest problem since I'd misspelled La MANCHA.
People: 7
Places: 4
Products: 4
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 76 (26%)
Funnyisms: 0 😫
Tee-Hee: LOTION.
Uniclues:
1 Where heaven would likely be.
2 Advertisement for lariat whisperer.
1 SECULAR EARTH (~)
2 YUP, I QUOTE ROPE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Stinks the place up. RIPS BOSSY WIND.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lovely observations!
and rock formations 😂👩🏽🎤🔥
Hey All !
What the mob boss got for his mother?
Guns N Roses
(Doesn't really follow the Theme, but hey ...)
Nice grid layout. Two 15's and two 13's as Themers. Only 36 Blockers, even with the Chunks of 5's by NW/SE.
Interesting idea for a theme. Played out nicely.
That's about it! Have a great Tuesday.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
What @Rex said. Exactly.
This was an easier-than-usual Tuesday for me. Instead of solving downs-only, I decided to not look at the clues at all and still finished in under 30 seconds. And GREEK ELEMENTS was actually the first answer I got. Just seemed right.
I think the GREEK ELEMENTS clue is trying to do something with Heraclitus (there are only three elements in the clue, not four). This is no defense for it, especially on a Tuesday, but I think the fact that water is not among them in the clue is the connection to the (older) Greekiness. I think…
Fun fact connected to the CAROLINA REAPER vein: the little city of Gastonia, NC where I live recently renamed its minor league baseball team the Gastonia Ghost Peppers. They had a season where they tried out a few different names, including the Gastronauts, Bolognia, Galactic Dinos, Zombees, Garden Gnomes, and Yarniaks. Minor league is so weird!
Thought this would be an overt EARTH Day tribute, starting with the Billie Joe Armstrong band, Tyson quote and thus confidently tapped in GREENELEMENTS.
Never heard of CAROLINAREAPERS, KIMBAP or DIERESIS, though only the middle one wasn’t inferable (sounds like a vulgar rap song, BAP by Lil KIM).
Speaking of vulgar rappers, was hoping it would be KANYE just for the reactions it would trigger here. (Like Fillmore East/West, KENYA WEST would be a good name for a Nairobi night club.)
Refreshing to see a rare CHALLENGING and “reveal all” from the all-knowing HEMUSTBEGIANT Rex!
I thought it was nice to have a crunchy Tuesday puzzle. With that said, I was surprised when Rex deemed it challenging for a Tuesday because my ever present “app timer” deemed me as having solved more than a minute faster than my average (remember, this doesn’t mean I’m fast, it’s just relative to ME).
Okay, c’mon, and “oh puhlease” to Rex and the GREEKELEMENTS business. I am NOT a classical scholar, but even I thought “oh yeah” when I had the GR at the beginning. Then, after reading Rex I searched the term…voila…plenty of entries listed. As for KIMBAP…first, welcome to my world of ignorance of all the yummies that other people seem to know, Rex. Always happy to learn about a food even though sushi type food isn’t my idea of deliciousness like it is for many. I’ve (now) heard of the “bap” foods (I won’t try to spell) and kimchi, so KIMBAP was inferable to me…even though I’ve never eaten it NOR seen it advertised.
Anyway…fun puzzle and clever theme, thanks AES.
I had the same issue. I know it as Gimbap, which made coming up with Greek a problem. “Greek Elements” may cause me distress for some time.
I was wondering what OFL might say about the GREEKELEMENTS / KIMBAP cross and found that he said exactly what I would have said, except I correctly guessed IDINA as the more likely woman's name. I'm sure I've seen it before--you too, AYO, but needed all the crosses for both of them. Oh well.
Does anyone call a QTIP a swab? Probably the same people that call a kleenex a tissue.
En un lugar de la MANCHA...always fun to think of the beginning of Don Quixote.
No real problems with this one except for that one cross. Liked the theme and thought it was well-executed. Nice job, AES. Actually Enjoyed Sussing out the themers, and thanks for all the fun.
😁
Much more common where?
A puzzle clued with the proper names of rock bands. Almost as much fun as a crossword clued with the names of video games. Didn’t we have one of those once?
I had no idea what the theme was supposed to be so just filled in the blanks as best I could, but gave up with several squares blank. I don’t actually need answers because what with google and OFL, I’ve been enlightened … but I did have a few questions. Is Jorge BORGES really a commonly familiar Argentine author? Are many people familiar with his most famous collections which were published 80 years ago? Who is AYO Edibiri? What is a double Dutch? Some kind of oven? What is a Carolina REAPER? What does it reap? What is a GREEK element? Is that something you learn in Greek class? What is KIMBAP? Is it good with kimchi? What kind of feature is a DIERESES? Is that really how it’s spelled? And finally, WTH are all these things doing in a Tuesday NYT puzzle?
Blam has almost certainly been around since the old Batman TV show. But go ahead and keep confusing/blaming generations that are decades apart.
Ayo has been in 4 puzzles in 2025 alone, all clued with her last name.
Idina Menzel has been a massive star for years.
Ayo's been in the NYTXW 4 times in the past 100 days.
Same issue with GREEK, especially since upon reading about the punctuation, the answer seems it should have been UMLAT. Or at least spelled DIAR…
Umlaut:
This term specifically refers to the two dots used in German to indicate a change in the pronunciation of a vowel (e.g., ä, ö, ü).
Diaeresis:
This term is used more generally to refer to the two dots used to indicate that two consecutive vowels are to be pronounced separately (e.g., in words like "coöperate" or "naïve").
It /should/ absolutely be diaeresis, or diæresis. OED has zero attestations of "dieresis" though I'm sure you could find such a thing in the USA. This diphthong is often reduced to an e because that is a good phonetic approximation in English. See eg encyclopædia.
Not the most enjoyable solve (I solve in the newspaper). It looked tough up top, and I ended up solving it bottom up. I couldn’t figure out of GREEK or GREEN was the right answer.
For future reference, dim sum is Cantonese and is not the name of a dish. Though I guess some dim sum dishes are vaguely like sushi?? Kimbap was a very helpful gimme for anyone who enjoys Korean cuisine.
Double Dutch is a style of jump roping. Anyone who's been 8 years old at any point should know it. Ayo Ediberi has been in the NYT Crossword 4 times this year, is an Emmy-winner, and is in a bunch of movies. Anyone who solves on a regular basis should know her. I'm surprised how many people (including Rex) don't know Carolina Reaper, but I guess that's less common knowledge than I thought. And the bands in question are MASSIVE. Like Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-level famous. All have had multiple huge hit songs and albums over the past few decades, and all have been around for at least 30 years. I don't think the issue wholly belongs to the puzzle here.
Definitely agree with your final question—this was very un-Tuesday. But BORGES is very major/familiar, pretty standard undergraduate world lit survey fare. I think basic intro-level knowledge of a given field is up for grabs on a Tuesday, even if that field is unfamiliar to many (this coming from someone who needs every cross for some celebrity names that many on this blog find to be gimmes…it’s just the nature of the beast with proper nouns).
Two early week puzzles in a row considered challenging by Rex—gotta be a record of some kind…I thought it was about average, but fun. The ELEMENTS might not be unique to the GREEKs, but they definitely had ‘em. Some fun with describing Korean consonants in English text—their alphabet specifies variations in pronunciation that are difficult for the American ear to catch, so neither KIMBAP nor “gimpap” capture the Korean perfectly but are close approximations.
Two grossly and unfairly difficult puzzles in a row on Monday and Tuesday. I agree with Whatsername @9:20 above: WTH is going on?
Ouch.... I think it took me 15 minutes. I do not really time myself but this was a very unTuesday-like time. I like The Bear but, I know alot of people like her, AYO I do not care for. There is something about her that rubs me the wrong way. I think she OVERACTS. CAROLINAREAPERS? WTH? is that a team? also had trouble w GREEKELEMENTS. I had GREEnELEMENTS at first for some reason. I know KIMCHI is Korean BBQ so I changed nIMBAP to KIMBAP and Bob's your uncle. Loved the BASEBALLPLAYER/Giants clue. DIERESIS on a Tuesday?, cmon BRUH (another term I hate - Bro is bad enough.) Tough Tuesday, was very glad to see Rex rated it Challenging.
I also considered diaries.
Yes
Yes
Popular actress
Well-known jump rope game (and no)
Type of pepper (and nothing)
Another way of saying classical element, more or less (and I don’t know)
Korean rice roll similar to maki (and yes)
A diacritical mark that indicates the vowel is part of a separate syllable (and no, it’s DIERESIS)
Can’t speak for the constructor, but probably adding some flavor and mild challenge to an early-week puzzle
Anything else? I’m here to help.
Bud holder is ear? Wut?
K/Gimbap is a kealoa. Both are correct.
Is the answer to "They might be Giants" a kealoa, since it could be baseball players or football players?
Wouldn't it have been easier for Neil deGrasse Tyson to just call EARTH "A fragile juxtaposition of GREEKELEMENTS"? I think this puzzle could use some EARTH control. And BTW, you might want to switch to American ELEMENTS with the new tariffs and all.
I know a guy named Rodney who's always looking to steal peoples identification documents. So I always put my IDINA safe before I let RODIN.
I hadn't a Clue about "Double Dutch need", but I was sure it was a non-rigid murder weapon.
The way you all are going on about the "ë" might be called DIERESIS of the mouth. I didn't find this hard, even though I solved it downs and acrosses only. Thanks for a rockin' good Tuesday, Alex Eaton-Salners.
Didn't mind the Greek elements clue, but still think BRUH instead of BROH is very odd. And, like someone else, I wanted DIARISTS or something along those lines, for the Brontes, at first. DIERESIS doesn't seem like a Tuesday word. But, also as someone else said, we can't complain that the puzzle was too easy!
Your ear might hold an earbud, to listen to a podcast, maybe, or some music. Hope that helps!
Gimbap is a valid spelling (though less common), but I’m not sure how you’d justify GREEGELEMENTS.
No has mentioned the capital G in Giants. With the B in BIG in place as well as the P in MARPLE, and the Y of YUP it should have been an instant aha. Then again there’s that pesky Brontë thing to gum up the works.
Yeeesh, way too many weird non-english-derived proper names in this one. Gross trivia fest for a Tuesday. Confident I've never encountered the word DIERESIS in my entire life (though I have seen the symbols of course!). I knew the clue was after the name of that symbol, but I had nothin'
I thought this was going to be an earth day puzzle so I put in green elements and thus was stuck in the same spot as OFL. I didn't understand the theme, even after I finished.
Tom Lehrer has done a bit of schtick at the end of doing his song about the chemical elements (well, all the elements of whom the fame has come to hahvard / and there may be many others but they haven't been discavered), Then there's the song about, perhaps he calls them the Greek, Elements, 'Earth Water Wind Fire. And he stops.
You should try the frozen kimbap from Trader Joe's. It's a "quick dinner" staple in our house. And today it helped me solve the puzzle, so even better!
google "korean sushi." gimbap is the leading variant.
Last night, I struggled with DIaRESIS, GREEnELEMENTS, nIMBoP, and having had too much wine (too much! some would say not nearly enough) I went to sleep with visions of solutions to crosswords dancing in my head. I attempt to explain what I saw.
The universe (which others call the Library of Solutions) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps an infinite, number of hexagonal galleries. The galleries contain twenty shelves - each shelf contains a thirty-two books of a uniform format; each page, of forty lines; each line, of some eighty symbols. I want to recall certain axioms:
The Solutions exist ab aeterno.
The number of symbols is 28. The 26 letters, but also is a solid black square and of course, the umlaut-looking thing in "Brontë" that isn't an umlaut.
It was long believed that the solutions belonged to the past or ancient languages. However, five hundred years ago, the chief of an upper hexagon found a page in a solution with the pattern OOXTEPLERNON. Surely this combination of letters could be deciphered! After years of study it was found to be a Samoyed-Lithuanian dialect of Guarani, with classical Arabic inflections. The meaning is too horrifying to repeat in these pages.
After further study, it was proclaimed that the Library contained all solutions to crosswords, and the first impression was of extravagant joy! All felt themselves lord of a secret, intact treasure. There was no crossword whose solution did not exist in some hexagon!
The impious assert that absurdities are the norm in the Library of Solutions and that anything reasonable is an almost miraculous exception. They speak of "the febrile Library of Solutions, whose hazardous volumes run the constant risk of being changed into others, and in which every solution is affirmed, denied, and confused as by a divinity in delirium."
It was here that with relief, with humiliation, with terror, I awoke.
(With apologies to JLB)
OFL DNF WTH
When I saw who the constructor was I GRUNTED - literally. But aside from
BRUH/BLAM (awful), DIERESIS, had Romeo for LOVER, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. And no typos :)
sounds like your internet is unplugged. :)
earbuds! 🎧
Once again cruised through this at my usual speed only to be stopped short at the very end trying to guess what a letter or couple of letters might be. Had never heard of DIERESIS (I can own that one - sounds like it's well-know enough), even though I guessed it probably had something to do with weird double-dot thing in the name. I eventually put in an "E" figuring that made the most sense, which left me with GREEn ELEMENTS as the most likely answer, but the word "green" was already in the SAINT PATRICKS DAY clue, and no happy music, so what to do then? You guessed it - just put in letters that spell any word and see what happens. Again.
DON'T LIKE IT. "Finished" in 10:15
I asked ChatGPT which was more common and it told me kimbap.
I searched Seamless for gimbap and got 0 results, I searched for kimbap and got 228 results.
I googled 'kimbap or gimbap' and got results suggesting both are fine, gimbap is more 'correct,' and kimbap is more common.
I also googled 'korean sushi' like you suggested. On the first page, kimbap appears 47 times and gimbap appears 20.
Where is gimbap 'much more common'?
yikes
Romeo before lover
I didn’t find this to be particularly challenging overall, but DIERESIS was a WoE for sure. I have heard if it but my brain was not about to produce it in this situation. Also, KIMBAP, again I’ve heard it but…
And I had ELECTEd first, have heard this term a lot recently.
@9:45 Anon. S*i*g*h. You may have noticed I specifically mentioned I did not need answers. Or sarcasm. But thank you ever so much for sharing your vast knowledge anyway.
On the tough side for me too. No true WOEs but I too had trouble spelling DIERESIS.
I did remember KIMBAP which I encountered watching the Netflix show “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” which is, much like Attorney Woo, excellent.
Costly erasure - BRaH before BRUH.
Cute idea, reasonably smooth grid, fun solve, liked it.
And Don Quixote was, of course, from La Mancha…which is also in the grid!
I kind of liked the theme - it's nice that I know all of the bands though that didn't actually help with the grid answers. I've never run into a CAROLINA REAPER before - habaneros are about as hot a chili as I have tolerance for, and then only in small doses.
I agree with Rex that the toughest thing in the grid was the GR_E_ crossing DI_RES_S. I, too, was sure about IDINA but kept imagining the Bronte sisters as DIARISTS. That would mess up a number of entries but seems possible at least. When I finally fit DIERESIS in, I realized it was referring to the symbol in the Bronte name that I can't recreate here because I can't find the keyboard that has those symbols on my new Chromebook laptop. (If anyone knows, let me know. I Googled it, couldn't make the instructions work for me.)
I've never been to Spain so was leery about 39D but eventually though of La Mancha. Thanks, Don Quixote!
AES, thanks for the puzzle!
I finally got the theme as SAINT PATRICKS became obvious from the crosses. GREEK ELEMENTS is shorthand for "the elements in ancient Greek philosophy," but it will do, I guess. I especially liked BASEBALL PLAYERS, since it's literally true -- any one baseball player might -- or might not -- be a GIANT.
But CAROLINA REAPERS? What am I missing? Maybe Rex will tell me.
I think someone should ban clues where you take an abbreviation, e.g. AAA, and ask for one of its elements -- and then abbreviate it! Gruesome. Also, I looked up DIERESIS and it means pronouncing two consecutive vowels separately, as in naïve. It's true that the mark used to indicate one is the same as the mark over the E in Bronte, but does that make the latter a DIERESIS? (Fun fact: I can't type that mark, but spellcheck put it into naïve for me.)
Also TIL that my addled brain confuses SUSAN Sarandon with Susan Sontag.
Sounds like maybe you need a new hobby. Like maybe one where you work with your hands.
I would not expect to see dieresis (with either selling) before Friday, "Umlaut, yes.
Thought this a very challenging for a Tuesday but quite interesting themeless puzzle. Still do. ?Band names? really?
Had a lot of other names, some seemed quite obscure.
All the words in that clue are capitalized -- it's the name of a band, hence a proper noun. So the capital G doesn't tell us anything more about the answer.
The romanization for the Korean language is... odd, for reasons I can't explain. KIMBAP when spelled in Korean uses the G consonant - same with kimchi and the surname Kim. Geembop is a more accurate phonetic spelling. Also, the surname Park is pronounced "Bok." There's a G, K, B, P consonant in the Korean alphabet, but no R, which makes "Park" a perplexing choice.
Nice wheelhouse puzzle (but don't call me BRUH). Enjoyed it a lot, thanks AES!
Always like to see a reference to my baseball team. An item of interest for you non baseball fans, the SF Giants have a player from South Korea, Jung Hoo Lee, who missed last season due to injury. This year he's doing very well both playing center field and batting, and already has a vocal fan club who call themselves the Jung Hoo Crew. When he comes up to bat or makes a good fielding play, all the fans chant his name which is highly chantable.
Having read all the discussion about DIERESIS and umlaut, it seems to me that the Brontes had an umlaut--it was used to change the pronunciation of a vowel, E. It was also not needed; Dante got along fine without one.
I went through the same thought process as Rex with kimchee and bibimbap, but that gave me the answer, combining two food-related syllables.
It was nice to see a basic word like kimbap frustrate "Rex." I so often have agony over crosses he has zippo problems with. I suck at names. Half the time I'm unaware of the author of the book I'm reading. Kimbap is a common word for those of us in west coast cities with lots of Asians. When he said he had heard of kimchee, I thought, who hasn't. That's like not knowing pho. Anyways, I found that kinda fun.
Wonderful!
Just noticed that ‘kimbap’ was part of the 1 down clue in puzzle No. 0318. Guess we have seen it before.
Crossing Idina, with Dieresis and Kimbap was just unfair.
"At some point, Patrick Brontë (born Brunty), the sisters' father, decided on the alternative spelling with the diaeresis over the terminal ⟨e⟩ to indicate that the name has two syllables." (From "Brontë Family" in Wikipedia; also, note the spelling of "diaeresis").
If the above claim is true, the affectation was the change in vowels, rather than the diaeresis over the final vowel, retaining the two-syllable pronunciation, which would not have been obvious after the "y" was changed to "e".
:) "Thelma and Louise" would've been a very different movie if it had starred Geena Davis and Susan Sontag.
Sort of problematic cross at 6D/15A, too. MENUET is a pretty common alternative spelling and unless Ms. Sorvino is really top of mind (I don't think I've ever watched "Mighty Aphrodite" all the way through) you might not be able to pull MIRA over MERA. Luckily it was my last unfilled space.
i just checked and it’s the third time in april they have made this mistake!! i guess there just aren’t comedy nerds at nyt games
I surprised myself by knowing all the names, and thought this was going to be an easy Tuesday puzzle until I hit that GREEKELEMENTS/DIERESIS(sp)/KIMBAP section. I was held up there by my absolute certainty that the third letter in "diaeresis" is an "a", and not noticing that trying to cram that spelling into 8 squares left me short one "e".
In my defense, I will point out that, of the several references I checked, only the American Heritage Dictionary considers DIERESIS to be the preferred spelling. The OED and Merriam-Webster, among others, label it a variant, as is right and proper, and so I must insist that the clue should have so indicated. ;-)
And GREEK ELEMENTS was not immediately obvious to me because I'm more familiar with the term "classical elements" and there are four or five of them (depending on whether you include aether), not three. But the three in the clue are definitely included in that grouping, and if you assume that the Greeks referenced here are ancient Greeks, they are considered "classical," so the answer is technically correct, I guess. But definitely inelegant, and kinda brutal on a Tuesday.
Kudos to all those who zoomed through that section!
Hey Dione and Anonymous, how’s it going on coming up with where gimbap is much more common than kimbap? If you’re going to post smarmy comments, you might as well be right, so I’m genuinely looking forward to learning something new.
I did this last evening, and when I finally got the Happy Pencil I thought "this is the worst puzzle in a loooong time". I put it down to having an exhausting frustrating day, but on second thought this morning, yeah, it was bad. Everything Rex said like Unknown Names, but especially phrases I've never heard crossing Unknown Names. I remember "bibimbap" so I tried BIMBAP, then of course NIMBAP to get GREEN ELEMENTS (note: that phrase also crosses MANCHA and MARPLE for which I of course had POIROT crossing AUTO.)
Plus, to start off we had 3 consecutive down names: UHAUL BORGES AYO. And I can't keep those South American authors straight, so I had NERUDA and LLHOSA (sic) and then even VARGAS.
@Gary Jugert: if you want some easy to remember German words: LAND, MANN, HAND, and HAUS are pronounced virtually the same as English and yes, mean the same. (The As in the first 3 are kinda halfway between our short A and U, eg "lund/land").
Sorry to hear that you threw up
Harder than snot for a TuesPuz. A scatterin of no-knows, plus the dreaded KIMBAP/IDINA/DIERESIS tri-nat-tick. Was about to petition the court to execute a stay on it, ...
But, But ...
43-Across clue had "Earth" in it. 19-Down answer was EARTH.
And today is Earth Day. Sooo ... OK.
QED.
staff weeject pick: AYO. Have tried hard to remember this puppy, and it finally clicked. Got 'er off the AY?.
some faves: QTIP/IQUOTE. CANINE + KAT. EARTH.
Thanx for all them band-aided clues, Mr. Eaton-Salners dude.
Happy Earth Day, y'all! [As the EPA loses 300 staffers.]
Masked & Anonymo8Us
... this here runt ain't as bad as it might sound ...
"Rap Stars" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
bruh is not odd. I've worked in high schools for years. That's what the kids say.
Rex! Missed opportunity!
GREEK ELEMENTS/KIMBAP is definitely a Natick! And yesterday’s Boston Marathon runs right through Natick!
Plato was Greek, not green.
Bruh/Brah/Broh are all various spellings/pronunciations of "Bro", as slang there is still variation in usage but hopefully it will fade from the language before a standard spelling is determined. Also the indeterminacy is a boon to constructors.
I actuslly liked this puzzle even though it did it's un-Tuesdayish best to screw me over in the SW. Confession: I was solving in the much despised downs-only mode. I know many of my wounds were self inflicted. But DIaRESIS trying to cross my unclued 43A GREEnELEMENTS resulting in nIMBAP was a real mess. Whew! I do d-o Tuesdays because they are usually too easy to solve in the regfular manner but this one would have been difficult even with the crosses.
Another confession: I should have got KIMBAP. I have eaten it with my daughter-in-law whose surname is - wait for it - Kim. I'm so embarrassed.
Since my daughter has recently become addicted to the Trader Joes Gimbap, I thought that was an easy get. Even the wikipedia entry is entitled Gimbap. Combined with weird use of 'greek', the more likely seeming 'green' (giving me NIMBAP?), a legitimate alternate spelling of 'diaeresis' which had me contracting it to diaresis (giving me 'GRAE_ ELEMENTS') that corner was just a tangled heap of ambiguity for me.
I wonder how many times a very famous person has to be in the NYTXW before you can’t really complain you’ve never heard of them before.
This played like a normal (easy) Tuesday for me. But I don't know enough about classical philosophy to object to GREEK ELEMENTS, and I didn't (and soon again won't) know how to spell "diaeresis," so no problem with DIERESIS in the grid. So I was competent enough to get the right answers, but not competent enough to know they were flawed. In Dunning-Kruger land, I'd like to think that I'm on the Slope of Enlightenment, but since my success was predicated on a certain level of ignorance, and I was quite confident in the answer, it seems I was closer to the Peak of Mount Stupid. No surprise there, I guess!
Gary, you’ll get more enjoyment from Moby Dick if you focus your reading on Ishmael, rather than on Ahab and his cursed whale. Ishmael is a wanderer, a mental traveller, an amateur philosopher -- who is often mistaken. He’s also very amusing, if you let him be. Melville is a subversive writer: things are seldom as they seem to be.
I really liked this post. As a person living in “fly over” country, it just brings home how some things are easy, due to location or whatnot, and some are hard. I’m in the “learner” camp. I guess that means I’m okay with things I don’t know and actually kind of embrace it. I mean, who doesn’t want to learn “new” things?
@Sailor and jberg…the combination of both your comments is hilarious. And jberg…I TOTALLY get what you’re sayin.’ We ALL have those things!
The movie is They Might Be Giants is one of my favorites. A rare old movie I rewatched recently and it is still lovely.
Jacke et al
Simplifying Greek & Latin spellings In American English has been going over 200 years. Most but not all æ and œ spellings are routinely simplified This one less so only because dieresis is a fairly esoteric word so less pressure to simplify BTW my autocorrect had no trouble with the puzzle spelling I have only seen the æ spelling in British publications. To me there is no should here Dieresis is fine in an American publication.
Southside Johnny
I can see the connection why you knew AYO. Over the years you have shown an interest in cooking and she is a star in a streaming dramady set in a restaurant. I on the other hand had no clue. So I needed every cross. But I have no complaints. She is not obscure
Many criticisms of answers in the puzzle are caused by the fact that the commenter doesn’t know or remember the word or the name. What I say that’s wrong. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean it’s obscure or made up.
I often work very hard to complete a crossword and feel proud when it’s done. Then I come over here, and nearly every time the complain is “This seemed way, way too easy for a [day of the week.]”. But I also frequently breeze right through a puzzle—and arrive to find “This was much harder than a [day of the week] usually is.”
It happens very consistently, and I’m not sure why. We’re both English professors. We’re both of a certain age. I like Shakespeare more, sure, but that’s true when I compare myself to most other people.
It’s a puzzle.
kj (Bardfilm)
7:50 AM anonymous
Unlike with Chinese, the transliteration from Korean to English has been a complete mess.
There has been some recent effort to clarify things. Going from unvoiced consonants to voiced consonants ( so p & k were used almost universally before but with a recent trend towards b & g). —— but it is nowhere near the Chinese effort. Food usage tends to be especially reluctant to change. So I see nothing wrong with the puzzle relying on the older but still more common version.
Hoo Boy! What @Rex said - almost exactly. I was all the way down through SAINT PATRICKS without any real trouble, and thought I understoid the theme
I laughed at myself all the way through your comments. It reflects how I feel about solving crosswords even after over 60 years of daily solving. Well said.
For kj: I understand your frustration. It's an age/generation thing. I'm 83, and don't want to deal with current pop singers and hip-hop talk in a puzzle.. The young crowd wants the opposite.
I agree, Anonymous. But Rex and I are not too far apart. Still, I admire your fourscore and three!
AMEN, Anonymous 3:48PM. Years after the requires 9th grade required reading, a college prof in a seminar on heroes in American literature suggested looking at Ismael and what a revelation! Great suggestion.
Couldn’t have dreamt it better myself!
I had a very similar experience @Darren Matthews.
HOO BOY! So there I was sitting at the car dealership having a recall issue that definitely needed a look, even though I’m reasonably certain my piston rings do not have the rather dire issue explained in the notice with unusual amounts of red ink wanting my prompt attention and warning me that failure to have it checked could result in needing an entire new engine. I only needed to be there until the mechanic had taken a preliminary peek to tell me if this was likely a 24-30 hour problem or worse, and thought I’d breeze through the Tuesday puzzle. It’s now over 5 hours of the later (and I thought I’d post today before y’all were through with dinner!) and I just finished.
But what the heck, I have 2 cents to add. I spent as much time figuring out the GREEK/DIERESIS crossing as I did on the whole puzzle. Maybe more. And I spent some extra time chiding myself on not knowing that earth, wind and fire have an “official” nickname (category? “commonly known as???) the GREEK ELEMENTS. Really? And what about water? And if you’re an Aristotelian add aether to the mix. Huh.
A great deal of my love of crosswords comes from the fact that I hope every day to learn something. Doesn’t have to be a big, life altering something, just something. I thought of a bunch of possibilities and not once thought of GREEK. Classical, historic, essential, and on and on maybe even GREEn since it is Earth day, but could NOT find a suitable 5 letter answer. Add to that the fact that I’m old and my rarely used ear BUDs are things I call plugs, and a bud goes in a lapel or a buttonhole or a vase or maybe an . . . urn? Nope.
The final nail in my coffin was the “Dammit! I can never remember the name and how to spell the NOT-umlaut thingy over the e on Brontë but it sounds kinda like diarrhea, right?” Um . . . .
Then there’s the KIMBAP, issue. For over 20 years, I was a roving soloist for church choirs, and my favorite client was one of the giant churches that was almost on the Oklahoma campus and attracted many music grad students, one of which was a doctoral student organist of Korean heritage. I thank her for introducing us to so many wonderful Korean foods none of which was KIMBAP. Bibmbap, sure. Thus, a K did not spring to mind even when running the alphabet, nothing seemed right for both the _ _ _ _ _ ELEMENTS and the “not” bIMBAP problem.
Imagine my feelings of incompetence, ignorance, stupidity etc when I just started putting in letters one at a time until K seemed possible and I finally had enough crosses to figure out DIERESIS and the happy music played. Wow.
Oh, and as I view my puzzle in the dark shame of running the alphabet twice and thereby not deserving the happy music, I still enjoyed the puzzle. The theme was clever. I envy the constructors who see theme ideas and bring them to fruition.
Happy Earth Day everyone. GREEn ELEMENTS would have been such a good one for today. Alas.
Ben, I was floored not long ago someone complained about ALAN ALDA being in the puzzle. ALAN ALDA! Not only is he in there often for the past 50 years, he has won 6 Emmy awards, 6 Golden Globes, been nominated for an Oscar and 3 times nominated for a Tony. I was stunned , then I felt old
Thanks, helpful
I was rather hoping it might “Blue Canary”
I too was expecting GimBap and not KimBap. It sent me all of a tizzy
Seeing your profile pic, I'm not shocked we are on a similar wavelength! And I also got into crosswords because of my grandmother. She did several a day (in erasable pen), and of course no Google then. Everyone in the family would point to that as evidence of how smart she was, and I grew up thinking I wanted to be like her.
My problem with the "Earth, Wind, and Fire" clue for GREEK ELEMENTS is that the band got its name from the Greek elements... so it's not a pun/coincidence/play on words like the other themers. It's simply a piece of trivia.
Same! As a very beginner crossword solver and a non-American who usually struggles with puzzles, I was very proud of myself for knowing something that Rex didn't. Definitely helps that I grew up in a city with likely one of the highest concentrations of Asian people (outside of Asia of course)
Lost my streak here. This was insane for a Tuesday. This should have been a Friday.
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