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It's not observed in Hawaii: Abbr. / FRI 6-27-25 / Scientist whose "number" is a dimensionless ratio / Half of a Jungian syzygy
Friday, June 27, 2025
Constructor: Carolyn Davies Lynch
Relative difficulty: Very, very easy (9:05)
THEME: Themeless
Word of the Day: Automated external defibrillator (EMTS, clued as [Many A.E.D. users]) —
An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation (VF) and pulseless ventricular tachycardia, and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electricity which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to re-establish an effective rhythm.
• • •
The first thing I noticed about this puzzle is the shape. A "stagger stack" (aka those three central answers, arranged using stair-step shapes of black squares along the edge) is probably my second favorite layout for a themeless puzzle, and I've used one very similar to this many times before. (Although, not for any of my NYT puzzles, I'm now realizing.)
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| Jason Derulo has fallen down the stair-step shapes on Carolyn Davies Lynch's crossword puzzle |
The second thing I noticed was how incredibly easy this puzzle was. As I said, I enjoy easy puzzles, but this one was too easy for me. I was finished with three-quarters of the puzzle in five minutes. And I would consider myself a proficient, but not speedy solver!! A puzzle outlet called Puzzmo keeps track of the way you solve their puzzles (like, the order in which you filled in the letters) so it can give you stats about your performance. (Side note: Is this a fun cute thing or is this creepily reminiscent of our surveillance state perhaps logging our every keystroke? I think it's the former.) They have one stat that they call "plonks," referring to you correctly filling in every letter of an entry without a single cross. To me, a "plonk" has the feeling of answering a question on Jeopardy.... or even taking a test. You aren't "puzzling" anything out, you're just filling in the trivia. "Plonking" in a long answer when the clue has some esoterica or tough wordplay can feel really satisfying, but doing so with ten answers in a row is a little dull.
I am super duper curious to see how the difficulty played for you guys! Taking a step back, there are definitely wordplay clues in here, like [One making the first move?] for PAWN and [Places to bear witness?] for ZOOS (that one was fantastic) and [Mass reply?] for AMEN, but the question marks made these easy for me. I actually think all three of these could have done without the question mark, and given the puzzle a little more tension.
And, in case it was not clear, I thought the long fill on this was fantastic. A puzzle cannot be easy unless the majority of the entries are recognizable terms, and that can be tough! SO THERE WE WERE might have been the winner for me. Sometimes conversational terms in puzzles can feel a tiny bit off, but this one is a phrase that I use and have heard, word-for-word, all the time. Also going to call out TEAM SPIRIT, SI SE PUEDE, FANTASY NOVELS, MICRO MANAGERS, SUCH IS LIFE, POP UP STORES, SPOON REST, and MONGOOSE as my favorite long fill. Sheesh that is so much!! Actually kind of mindboggling.
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| The opening scene of Casino Royale features a mongoose fighting a snake and because I watched that movie when I was way too young, that image it will be burned into my brain forever |
The short fill sometimes gave me pause (meaning, a couple seconds of slow down) particularly ASUS (I had "Acer" for soooo long... They are also Taiwanese!!!) and the crossing of EMTS / ANIMA. But the rest of it was super smooth.
Bullets:
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Bullets:
- [Language mutually intelligible with Hindi] for URDU — I didn't know this! My grandparents speak and understand both Hindi and Punjabi, but I didn't know that Urdu was so similar as well. I wish English had a mutually intelligible language.
- [Rooibos, by another name] for RED TEA — One of my coworkers taught me that what we call "black tea" in English is known as red tea in Chinese. (The leaves are black, but it is reddish when brewed.) But then in English, we separately have a red tea category for rooibos.
- [Feature of many a deluxe Swiss Army knife] for SAW — How big is the deluxe knife that it can fit a whole-ass saw in there????
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95 comments:
This was a tough Tuesday for me, so yes, very easy! Lotsa whoosh! No costly erasures and no WOEs, although, I knew NEYO from crosswords but did not know about the hyphen.
Speaking of “plonks” I did spell EROGENOUS right on the first try.
Smooth grid with more a bit of sparkle, just not a Friday. Liked it but…
A knight can also make the opening move in chess.
Hi Malaika, happy MFriday. Glad it was easy for you; pretty average difficulty wise Friday for me. Way better than yesterday, which I hated. Nice fun long answers here.
I too liked the clues for ZOOS and PAWNS. SI SE PUEDE was a complete WOE, however. Random letters, basically.
Silly typeover: 45 across "First nation to restore its independence from the Soviet Union", looking at ----U---A, I recklessly put in TANNU TUVA. It fit perfectly, and I guess it was *maybe* *remotely* possible, but really? What was I thinking? Is there a nation by that name? And what weird part of my brain did *that* name come from.
And that 51a clue "many A.E.D. users"... what the &%$ does AED stand for? I guessed ENTS because... well, no idea, basically, 3 letter medical persons. But once I figured out LITHUANIA, I saw ANIMA and thus EMTS.
Fun fact: the Latin plural of OPUS is OPERA (works). In Italy, on the street I saw an orange sign reading OPERA which meant, basically, "construction ahead". One of many "fancy" words in English with a quite prosaic Italian meaning.
I still can't access the puzzle directly so I do a sort of backdoor access. I click on "Games" at the top of the NYT home page and when the nonresponsive crossword puzzle pops up, I scroll down to one of the other games like "Connections" and click on it. When it opens, I scroll down below it to "The Crossword" and click on that. The puzzle opens but this time with a "Play without an account" option. I click on that and I'm in! "Crossword Archives" can also be accessed the same way.
I thought this puzzle had a of of really nice, interesting entries. I even remembered how to spell EROGENOUS! I did notice, however, and not in a good way, that several longs needed some convenient help to fill their slots. The ones that especially caught my eye were some two for one POCs where a Down and an Across both get a letter count boost by sharing a final S. This happens with ANNUAL/FANTASY NOVEL, RAW DEAL/MICROMANAGER, POP UP STORE/AGENT and RUNAWAY HIT/TERN. Four of those two fers is quite high for a themeless.
Not a very difficult Friday but it opened tough for me. A quadrilateral toy with diagonal symmetry? Really? No idea even though I have constructed my own kites from various flexible hardwoods, including crossword fave yew and acres of shiny mylar. And chicken KATSU eluded me even though I am familiar with a very tasty ramen dish called tonkotsu, made with slightly thick, cloudy pork bone broth. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have popped in kotsu and been close. As it was I just moved on to the next section and returned to the NW to finish up. Once I got back up there I had to deal with SISEPUEDE, which I had from crosses but couldn’t parse. I don’t speak Spanish but thought SI (yes) might be the start of a motto and I guessed right. Looked it up post-solve and it seems to mean Yes, we can.
And now we move on to 17D SPOONREST. I have cooked almost all of my life. At age twelve I was the chief cook for a family of seven. Both my parents worked full time, my mother often taking on 2 jobs. We kids had to chip in and I chose to cook. At university my soon-to-be-wife and I would host dinners for fellow students with menus supplied by Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines. I’ve taught my kids to cook.They are all better than me and one of them is a professional chef. None of them, nor I, would ever be caught dead with a SPOONREST on the counter beside our stoves. You’ve got to put that spoon somewhere, why not just place it on the counter. If your counter is so fragile that it can’t take that kind of horrendous abuse, place a cutting board there and plop your gunky utensils on it. Have a cloth handy to wipe up as you go. SPOONRESTs are the doilies of the kitchen. Get rid of them.
Further on this topic, if you’re willing … I have a dear friend from the Bronx who arrived here on the west coast of Canada in the early 70s and makes one of the best tomato pasta sauces imaginable Her Italian-American mother’s recipe. Really rich, really nice. Once I offered to help her in the kitchen and she blew up on me when I didn’t place the wooden spoon in the little china rest. I argued my case - I had a towel on my shoulder and used it to wipe up the smattering of red sauce on the counter but she was having none of that. I have, since that black day, been banned from her kitchen.
The puzzle was pretty good but the SPOONREST memories were even. better.
Mostly easy except for SISIPUEDE. I wonder how many farm workers know it's their theme, or could even pronounce it (I couldn't). Otherwise closer to a Wednesday in difficulty, I thought.
I've usually seen (smart) ALEC spelled "aleck," but that's a nit.
@Malaika, English does have a mutually intelligible partner language: British English :)
I agree that this was a very Easy Friday.
Overwrites:
Misremembered the crosswordese heroine at 4D as ESnE instead of ESME
At 25D, my "number" scientist was Mohs before it was MACH
My 34A boom was in oil before it was in TNT
Nowadays, 37A customer service workers can be roboTS as well as AGENTS (although they can be both)
At 49A, I saw the clue, thought @Malaika Acer but didn't fill it in until crosses forde ASUS.
For some reason, my first thought for the 53A divers were loonS instead of TERNS
Only one WOE, Chicken KATSU (1D)
I call plonks gimmes, and there were a lot of them for me, 17 out of 68, exactly 25%. High for a Friday.
I didn't know that STAN Lee made cameo appearances in Marvel movies. There have been more than fifty of them? I suppose he got the idea from Hitchcock.
I think it is a half-assed saw in the Swiss Army knife.
Malaika, I hang my head in shame at your “very, very easy” rating. For me, definitely medium. I too fell for the Asus/Acer kealoa. SOwHEREWErEwE also ate up some time. And despite a good six months now of daily Spanish lessons on Duolingo, I still struggled to get SISEPUEDE. But can we figure out that Spanish phrase? Si, se puede.
Very easy for me as well, @Malaika--definitely not Friday-level difficult. I had the most. "trouble" in the NE; I couldn't see RED TEA for a while and the E was the last letter I filled in, but once I got START HERE and ANNUALS that corner felt nearly as easy as the rest of the puzzle. Nice write-up.
Just a few seconds off my PR for a Friday. Would have blown my PR away if it weren't for the Natick I ended up with at ASP/PAESE that took me over a minute to get that P in there.
Pretty easy for me too, but I finished with an error. (But not really “finished” because I knew I had something wrong and wouldn’t have turned it in if I was in a contest.) I had SISEPIEDE for the Farmworkers’ slogan, which made absolutely no sense. My error was having POPinSTORES - I was thinking of “Shops” in the clue as a verb (but I didn’t get the tense right). OnUS seemed possible for “a real piece of work.” After finishing with an error message, I immediately went back to that spot, and soon saw that it should be UP not in, and recognized SI SE PUEDE. If not for that, I might have had a Friday record.
Thanks for telling us about Puzzmo, Malaika. That sounds worth trying. I like that Connections now lets you see how hard each day’s game was and analyzes your choices compared to other solvers. Yesterday was very hard, today quite easy, and I was pretty rare in my blue-green-purple-yellow order. I am also amazed that when I checked it at 6 am today, almost a million people had already played. Can that be right?
Agree completely about SPOONRESTs. So you don’t have to wipe the counter just there but you have another dish item to wash? Where’s the sense in that?
I found this pretty easy for a Friday, with a few trouble spots. I “plonked” in (thanks for sharing this piece of crossword lingo, Malaika!) FANTASYNOVELS, which helped a lot, but KITES was very difficult to come up with. I don’t think of a KITE as a toy, really, and also can’t they be non-quadrilaterl shapes? I also had “once upon a time” before SOTHEREWEWERE, which slowed me up.
For an asylum case I handled in the immigration court, the judge asked the interpreter if he could confirm that the Urdu language document said what we claimed. The interpreter said he could not confirm that. I knew this case was genuine, as was the document. So, on a hunch, I asked the interpreter if he could read Urdu and he said no. I learned that day that the languages have different writing systems.
I am competent, regular solver. I found this puzzle on the easy side for a Friday, but definitely not “very, very easy.” I know a little Spanish, but was somewhat stumped with SISEPUEDE. (That clue/answer alone should remove one of the east’s.) Overall, enjoyed the puzzle, and really enjoy the term plonk. :)
I think The NY Times needs someone with a math background to edit their maths clues since they often get them wrong. Today it’s 1 across… a kite has TWO diagonals and there’s only symmetry across one of them. So the clue should include “one of” to be accurate.
The cross at KATSU and SI SE PUEDE was a near-Natick for me. There weren’t a lot of options for that space, but neither term was familiar.
This one was super easy and super quick my was as well. Not a fastest-ever solve, but not that far off and I wasn't even trying. Well below my Friday average and about a minute quicker than Malaika.
My only hangup was ZOOS, where I had ZOOm for a bit - since most court hearings are now done by zoom. Oh well.
Seriously? Crossing katsu with sisepuede?
My kind of Friday puzzle -- light, upbeat and easy. Enjoyed the long phrases and impressed by the long Down. Thanks Carolyn!
Thought the Word of the Day should have been "hypocorism" from the clue for 27A. After looking it up, I now plan to spend the rest of the day creating hypocorism for friends, family, and people that I encounter
I visited Tannu Tuva once, beautiful place, South Pacific climate in the middle of the Baltics.
Very interesting info about 'opera', works capes just doesn't seem so cool.
Easy-medium for me. 18 minutes compared to 25 average with 13 as a best. I did spend an extra couple of minutes trying to clean up the Anima/Emts cross. I plopped down EnTS and didn’t recognize Anima. Entirely on me and crossword reflex. I do know the difference between EMT and an ENT doctor. So maybe it should’ve been easy.
Other light “trouble” spots:
Neyo
Dens instead of Zoos
Wanted Romania instead of Lithuania from my 12 year old brains memory if 1989, and even though it obviously didn’t fit could not get it out of my head.
Get off my lawn instead of case.
So basically the southeast bumped it from easy to easy-medium for me.
Oh, that center stagger-stack! Do you know how hard it is to create a triple stack with 100% smooth crosses, like this one? To fill it completely with answers that shine with interest? And with vibrant answers, all three being NYT answer debuts?
Just gorgeous. A gift for solvers and crossnerds like me alike.
Then I had the kick of a triple blast in the SW, where [Places to bear witness?] gave me, with a “Hah!”, ZOOS, then that Z triggered STANZAS, and in a splat, the whole corner fell. A thrilling boom-boom-boom rush.
Beauty and thrill. What more can you ask for? How about more beauty, such as SO THERE WE WERE, SUCH IS LIFE, RUNAWAY HITS, MONGOOSE, FITTED OUT, SPOONREST, START HERE, and RAW DEALS?
How about zingy clues, such as [Shops for a short time?] and [Found a parking spot]? How about sweet moments, such as when when I started inwardly singing “So Long, Farewell” and picturing the "Sound of Music" scene?
Your puzzle, Carolyn, made me think of Marie Kondo, because it sparked joy. Three puzzles in, you’ve become a not-to-miss for me. Thank you!
Hand up for thinking ACER, not knowing KATSU, not thinking Spanish for the farm motto, and not thinking of a KITE at all despite having made some—so I was off to a really good start. But I did recognize ESME, so a tiny satisfaction there. That little SAW in the Swiss Army knife is not much of a threat to wood but makes for some conversation. No problem with STAN the man, tho I was amazed to learn he had 50 of those cameos. All in all, was saved mainly by the fun themers that felt relatively easy to decipher from a few crosses.
Had "MACHOMANAGERS" instead of MICRO almost to the end. and the clue for PAWN should be "One making a first move", not the first move: as commented earlier, a knight can also make the first move in a chess game. This wasn't my fastest Friday solve, but I really enjoyed it -- great answers throughout.
My two female sister cats are named Esme and Scout (RIP) after my favorite young women of literature and Esme helps me solve by keeping my feet warm in bed so that one was a gimme that also made me smile.
Saddened by this blatant display of antispoonrestarianism. Can't we all just get along?
The United Farm Workers of America’s motto—the union of agricultural workers that organized for better working conditions, health care, and wages in the 1960s. The farm workers that make it possible for you to have grapes, lettuce, avocado, and SO MANY fruits and vegetables all year round in your local grocery store. “Si, se puede” was the motto coined by one of the leaders in this fight, Dolores Huerta, and has been used by countless other community organizers and activists since. Barack Obama also used it (and its English translation, “Yes, We Can”) in some of his primary campaigns.
I don’t picture a kite with symmetry across its diagonal. The kite that my mind sees (Charlie Brown’s kite) has symmetry across its vertical.
Sure. We old timers are often up in the middle of the night and Wordle and Connections are fun to do in the moonlight.
I remember when Bernie Sanders was running against Hilary and a reporter asked him if he'd be able to handle the crisis phone call at 3 am. He said he's usually up at that hour to go to the bathroom.
I once entered a language contest. I was asked to pronounce words in several African languages. I got them all right. When I told the professor I had never done it before, he said, "Urdu."
It looks like I’m a bit of an outlier, at least so far, as I really had to work at this one. I don’t know what a hypocorism is - ditto for syzygy, rooibos (which auto-incorrect won’t even let me type after three tries), A.E.D. and of course SI SE PUEDE was un-inferable to me.
On the plus side, I did plonk in EROGENOUS - and I rarely plonk much of anything on a Friday, even one that is playing like a Wednesday for y’all.
Not surprisingly, I’m a yes on STAN Lee and his cameos, and a no on NEYO and his hyphen.
Very easy (6:47) with a good ⅓ or more of the time in the S and SE.
Yep, very easy for a Friday and fairly easy for a Tuesday, but easy-breezy is fine with me, occasionally. I know the expression SISEPUEDE well enough, but for some reason wasn't expecting the motto to be in Spanish. Come on man.
Not many speed bumps today. Knew nothing of rooibos or REDTEA and the W of PAWN and RAWDEALS eluded me for a while. CORDS had an odd clue, never remember ASUS and hello NEYO, nice to meet you. I am familiar with the SAW on a Swiss army knife and it would be useful for cutting a pencil in half, but not much else.
Very pleasant Fridecito, CDL. I Could Do Lots of these and not complain, and thanks for all the fun.
And here I was “plonking” away and thought that I must have a special Vulcan mind-meld with the constructor! At first I thought…”wait, is today Friday?” Doesn’t matter…I really liked so much of the fill today. One of the “non-plonks” was SISEPUEDE, but I cleaned that up quickly. I probably spent more time in the small SE corner being unable to “see” ANIMA, thinking rIFfs instead of SIFTS, and being clueless that A.E.D. is just what I call a defibrillator.
All in all, a delightful Friday offering!
This could be unwanted “advice” but it sounds like you have across the board digital access. If so you can install the puzzle app and use the username/password that you use for the “paper” to “activate”/install the puzzle/game app.
Yes, easy, and also fun!
Like Malaika, I finished up in the NW. And got stuck. Didn’t know KATSU or SI SE PUEDE and couldn’t figure out KITE or TEASE. So, reluctantly, I decided to cheat. I started to look up the Japanese chicken dish on my geriatric tablet, on which I was solving the puzzle. Well, this tablet is now so old that it takes forever to connect with anything, and while it was manfully endeavoring to forge a path to Japanese chicken dishes, I was suddenly struck by the word KITE. Yes! That must be the answer to that quadrilateral toy business! So, I shut down the seemingly endless search attempt, went back to the puzzle, filled in KITE, saw TEASE and took a guess at the crossing S in KATSU and SI SE PUEDE. Yeah! Saved from cheating by decrepit electronics!
“Hypocorism”! (Hey, @waryoptimist, 7:40.) Wow, puzzle, thank you for giving me this word. Unlike Will Rogers, I’ve met a lot of men I didn’t like (see below), but I’ve seldom met a five-dollar, multisyllable, lexical extravaganza such as this one that I didn’t immediately love. It seems to mean more than just a nickname but, as Wikipedia says, “a name to show affection for a person.” Too bad they used HAL as an example. The only HAL I’ve ever known (apart from the HAL 9000) is my cousin’s ex-husband, and affection is not what any of us ever felt for him – except, of course, my cousin, briefly and deludedly. (Another gem in today's clues was Jung's "syzygy.")
Oddly, was just talking about The Jungle Book the other day, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’s name and the fact that he’s a MONGOOSE came up. Here’s Donovan telling us that we can’t count on RTT to kill our snakes for us but we have to do it ourselves.
SUCH IS LIFE is a favorite expression, said with a twinkle in the eye but in the most world-weary voice I can muster.
SI SE PUEDE is Spanish for “Yes, we can” and is the slogan for migrant farm workers in the U.S. who’ve historically been exploited by their employers. Dolores Huerta, one of the movement’s leaders, came up with it, and Barack Obama famously stole it for his campaign slogan.
Did not understand the PAWN answer
Actually, Hitchcock got the cameo idea from Stan Lee’s grandfather, Stanislaw Lewinski, a Polish fine art film maker, who always appeared in a cameo role in his films.
Hi Malaika.
Just curious. What's your first favorite layout?
Nothing better than personal proclivities made to be judgmental, normative claims for universal behavior. Perhaps your friend took issue with being told how to behave in their own kitchen, over something as arbitrary as how to deal with a sauce laden spoon, than the actual utensil?
I haven't done today's puzzle yet, but for those of you who disliked yesterday's Thursday puzzle, I wanted to mention that I went into the archives and did a Thursday puzzle from July 25, 2013, that Rex actually called "astonishing." It was lots of fun, so if you weren't doing puzzles 8 years ago it will be new to you and you may want to give it a try!
It’s Spanish. Which most of them speak. They can pronounce it.
Hey All !
Rooibos TEA! Har, don't worry @pablo, not going to take a point for that! Maybe I can be RooibosMonster. Nah, doesn't have the same ring to it.
FANTASY NOVEL, you can get mine on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com, Changing Times by Darrin Vail.
"Has it got any sports in it?"
"Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles ... " 😁
Well, it's got some of those ...
Plus aliens, time travel, alternate lives. Sounds awesome, no?
Good puz, quick solve except for the NW. Goodness, that was a tough corner. A lot of unknown packed into one area.
Had ZiOn for ZOOS first, too close to Zion National Park out here (about a 3 hr drive), in Southern Utah.
SO THERE WE WERE, FITTED OUT at the START HERE line. Lots of TEAM SPIRIT until the other team had RUNAWAY HITS. SUCH IS LIFE.
/scene
Enough out of me. Have a great Friday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
This was very easy for a Friday and aside from a few tough spots I loved it. I couldn’t come up with kite and had no idea what a hypocorism is.
A place to bear witness was one of my favorite clues in a long time.
LOL!! Having used one I would agree!!
SO THERE WE WERE, covered from head to toe in green paint. I guess that sets the scene pretty well. I find SUCH IS LIFE and START HERE more in the language, though.
Love MICROMANAGERS. Inspired clue for ZOOS (47A).
If I were a real cook or even a cook at all, would I know what a SPOON REST is? Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure I don't have one.
My only nit today: Why, with 100 ways to clue CORDS, would you clue it with an ugly partial? Choices like this should stem from desperation -- trying to hang onto a puzzle that's working well everywhere else and, darn, you simply have to do it! It shouldn't be a completely arbitrary decision.
Found this puzzle lively and enjoyable, if pretty easy for a Friday.
Very easy for me as well. Finished in 9:35, without pausing the game for a cat interruption!
Great writeup
Sí se puede isn’t the theme of an occupation; it’s the motto of a union. I wonder if you’re thinking about farmers and not farm workers. Many farm workers are from Spanish-speaking countries.
How about Ricketts and Risch for 35d? These puzzles are forever skewed in favor of cosmopolitan people.
35D - possibly a typo ?
Pretty easy for a Friday. I really liked MICROMANAGERS. WOES were RED TEA (ROOIBOS), NEYO, ANIMA.
Just adding - my father's name was Harold - NOBODY would ever think of calling him HAL - it just didn't fit him - he was "HY" because he was tall (dark & handsome :)
Oh & how could I forget the biggest WOE of all - SISEPUEDE?
Drunkard: Where were you guys?
Friends: SOTHEREWEWERE, you were just too drunk to see us.
Drunkard: I saw a STARTHERE, maybe a lot of stars now that I think about it.
So, is the R&B star N-EYO, NE-YO or NEY-O? Asking for a friend.
What a coincidence having ERIEPA and ERIE a day apart. It's kinda eerie.
Nice cluing. Super easy puzzle. Thanks, Carolyn Davies Lynch.
Hypocorism! Syzygy! This one was like the good old days. I did enjoy the non-snake ASP, too.
My best move came near the beginning of the solve, when I decided to check some crosses before throwing in "enthusIasm" for what fans have (off the I in ADIEU). That saved me a lot of trouble.
I never used to use them, but one day 40 or 50 years ago, a technician came over to fix our cookstove, and put a SPOON REST on the counter as a gift--he didn't even say anything about it, just put it there. I got a second one the same way, plus a nearly useless but cute tiny one shaped like a cardinal (the avian kind). I think the idea is not so much to keep the counter clean as to avoid getting any dirt on your spoon, which you are probably going to use some more. Despite all that experience, I dreamed up a SPOON Rack first.
UFCW is based in the Central Valley of California, where most farmworkers speak Spanish as their first language.
15A reminds me of a relevant cameo from “big bang theory” involving Sheldon and the answer to 15A. It’s in YouTube and shows that Lee was a good actor.
I really loved [Places to bear witness]! My favorite clue in a long time.
As a Californian, I can assure you that most farm workers know the theme and that ALL of them know how to pronounce it!
Duh - 35A, coming into focus (slowly). You have a preference for a certain type of Senator. The only one of the 4 that I even recognize is Liz from MA, said our resident PPP savant.
@Malaika, me, too, for finding the puzzle very easy; and I like your "plonks." Strictly speaking, I didn't have any, since I worked from crosses, from KATSU x KITE to ALEC x CASE. To answer your wordplay question, I thought of ZOOS and AMEN right away, but for "One making the first move," my first thought was of Adam, being driven from Eden. I also have to admit to one definite non-plonk: for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi I wrote in Marmoset, all the while thinking "I know that isn't right."
Unbelievably easy (6:27) in a week whose difficulty has made no sense. Friday took me well under half the time Thursday took; it was more than three minutes faster than Wednesday; and as it took me a couple of minutes to locate a single error, a couple of minutes faster than Tuesday. That should never, ever be the case, no matter how many long clues there are.
I quite enjoyed some of the sillier clues, but even then, they weren't difficult, just cute. Indeed, I enjoyed breezing through this puzzle a great deal; the problem here lies with Will and/or the Times puzzle team, not Carolyn.
SPOONREST defender here. I've found that if I correctly position my cooking implement crosswise across its edges, I don't have to wash it - or my counter.
Rooibos is from South Africa, and is not really tea. It has started to spread. I once bought a packet, and learned that I don't like it, but some do.
Every farm worker, amigo!
"Cosmopolitan?" What on earth do you mean by that?
By definition, you have to have at least one "'plonk," your first entry.
DEM for SEN held me up for a few minutes.
My old company sold AEDs so i felt quite smug as i answered that clue. It’s one of those pieces of information that i rarely get a chance to use so can imagine my glee at see it pop up
Try logging into the NYT site in an incognito/private window and see if it's broken there. If it works there, you most likely need to clear your cookies/site data for NYTimes.com.
Unlike the crossword puzzle schedule, the Connections comes out at midnight local time. If you're in the Americas, a good chunk of the world has already played it by your morning. If a puzzle skews USA-centric, you can see the solve rate increase as the day goes on.
(Plus there's the late-night solve crew, as mentioned, which I'm also a part of.)
9:06 for me lol
It's si, se puede
I use a SPOONREST because I’m not sure if the can of granite/quartz cleaner I use on my counters is stuff I want on my spoons.
I also thought Adam for the first mover and thought it pretty clever, for a second or two.
@Liveprof. Thanks. Nice to start my day off with a chuckle. Antispoonrestarianism, indeed.
Hypocorism was totally new to me but syzygy I kind of knew, probably from crosswords of old.
@JT, oh that 2013 puzzle was really epic! One of my favorites of all time.
Re SPOON REST... I just use a small plate to set the stirring spoons on. Easiest thing in the world to wash.
Yes, I did think about that, but I had in mind Malaika's "'Plonking' in a long answer when the clue has some esoterica or tough wordplay can feel really satisfying...." So, for me today, KATSU would be a gimme but not a plonk :)
It’s three words. Yes we can.
So fun!! Thanks for flagging!
One more hand up for team SPOONREST. Why spread your sauce around on the countertop when it's so easy to contain it in a small piece of porcelain that you can just pop in the dishwasher? But I suspect this is one of those dichotomies that is determined more by personality than by logic.
Wait . . nobody Naticked at Katsu/Si se puede?
Thanks, Barbara, for the Donovan clip. Haven't heard it for at least 2 days. Seriously. I have a Donovan playlist on Spotify and I crank it up to 11 when I'm running errands in my truck on sunny days. Keeps me happy. And Rikki shows up quite often in random play mode. It's been. cloudy and even rainy for the last few days so I've been listening to my moodier 70s faves by Pentangle. Nothing wrong with that but I liked the Donovan and the sky seems to be clearing.
"Cosmopolitan" is an anti-Semitic slur favored by white supremacists.
Erogenous for the win
Thanks Beezer and Anon. I've signed out, I've reset my password, I've cleared the browser cache and tried several other things suggested in the live help chats over the last few days and nothing has changed. I've had an account for over 15 years and I still can access online NYT articles and all the games except the crossword and archives. The help chatters (?) have said a problem has been reported and that the Technical Team will have it resolved in 24 hours. That was a few days ago! I can still open the puzz and archives by the circuitous route I mentioned above so all is not lost.
Possibly because Ricketts and Risch wouldn't qualify under the Senatorial Oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ....
I did. Also at ASP / PAESE.
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