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Electronic music genre / SUN 7-13-25 / Phrase cooed en español / Two-stringed Chinese instrument / Soft palate appendages / Daughter on "Bob's Burgers" / Looked high and low in / Jersey boys? / Puccini opera set in Rome / Certain religious pacifist
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Constructor: Brandon Koppy
Relative difficulty: Easy 
THEME: Tunnel Vision — Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. The entries HOLES IN / THE WALL and BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE serve as a kind of double revealer to indicate that 8 answers in the puzzle go across the central vertical line of black squares. Each half of these answers is clued normally, but the note (accessible by clicking the "i" icon in the app) has the 8 clues for the full across entries that cross the "wall." Additionally, the letters along the wall spell THE DOORS, which is the band that sings Break Through (To The Other Side).
Word of the Day: ELPHABA (45A: "Wicked" protagonist) —
Elphaba Thropp (/ˈɛlfəbə ˈθrɒp/ ⓘ) is the protagonist of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel's musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
• • •
- 1D / 114D HOLES IN / THE WALL [Some neighborhood bars ... or what connects eight pairs of answers in this puzzle?]
- 68D / 18D BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE [Classic 1967 song by a group whose name is a hint to solving the eight bonus clues (see note)]
- 5A / 11A DEMONS + T + RATE [Show how it's done]
- 31A / 32A BEET + H + OVEN ["Für Elise" composer]
- 56A / 57A GOB + E + TWEENS [They can help with conflict resolution]
- 69A / 70A DECO + D + ERRING [Spy device in old cereal boxes]
- 94A / 96A DISHON + O + RING [Bringing shame upon]
- 103A / 104A MENSCH + O + IRS [Bass-heavy musical groups, maybe]
- 133A / 134A AAVE + R + AGES [Valedictorians have them]
- 146A / 147A HONE + S + TWOMAN [New bride, quaintly]
Phew, alright, that was a lot of theme! Hello! It's Rafa covering for Rex today. Last time I was here I accidentally blogged the wrong puzzle and you all got two write-ups (I'm sorry / you're welcome) but today I triple-checked that this is indeed the puzzle I'm meant to be talking about. Let's get into it.
There's a lot going on with this theme, but the whole thing had one (IMO) fatal flaw that held the puzzle back. It's a real shame, because it's all very clever and cool and well-done from a gridding perspective, but it is what it is. The issue for me is that the main conceit of the theme (i.e. that 8 of the answers go through the central wall) was entirely irrelevant to the solve. I uncovered the two revealers and was excited to figure out how and why answers would cross the long line of black squares but ... that aha moment never came! I finished the puzzle, and the app immediately animated the squares along the center (spelling THE DOORS) and I never got a chance to even look at the clues in the note or figure out what was going on. Why was I denied this joy?!
 |
| TADPOLE |
Plus, it feels like a decently straightforward thing to fix with the cluing. For DEMONSTRATE, for example, I would have kept the clue for the RATE part the same, but, at 5A, instead of cluing DEMONS, why not clue the whole answer DEMONSTRATE? Then, you have to figure out what's going on to make the clue make sense. Maybe I'm too salty about it, but I felt totally robbed of the joy of figuring out the theme, and it felt like solving a high word-count themeless. (Which is fine, but it's the misleading advertising that gets me! If it's themeless then don't give me *two* revealers!)
 |
| MORAY EEL |
Anyways, maybe other people had different experiences figuring out what was going on here. Perhaps the experience of solving this one in print is better, since you don't get the animation spoiler. Let me know.
Putting this significant issue aside, as I mentioned already, this is a very well-executed puzzle! There's a lot of theme material, and the fill is quite smooth. We even get some nice bonuses in LOADS TIME, WESTEROS, NOW I GET IT, TO-DO LIST, UP ARROW, etc. I tend to live in a post-dupe crossword world (as in, I don't notice or care about dupes) but I did notice LET LIE and LIE ON (though I did not care!) -- is this something people care notice or care about?
 |
| COD |
Overall it felt on the easy side for a Sunday. Not a PR time for me, but decently close. The only area that posed resistance was the SW corner, where I wanted MOROSE for [Eeyore-esque] (instead of GLOOMY), and nothing else was coming easily. I think I was really speeding through it because I was so excited (in vain, alas!) to get to cracking the theme. Clearly the theme presentation was my biggest takeaway from the puzzle, as I keep coming back to it!
That's all from me today! Hope you all are having a lovely weekend, and wishing you the best for the week ahead.
- 22A OLAV [Name that becomes a shape if you switch the second and fourth letters] / 144A OVAL [Shape that becomes a name if you switch the second and fourth letters] — This was cute
- 105A IN PAWN [Traded for cash]— I had never heard the expression "in pawn" before. I wanted PAWNED at first, and then was some crosses resolved, I wanted IMPAWN (which I assumed was a verb, though now I realize it would only work if the clue said "trade" instead of "traded") (turns out it is, in fact, a verb per Merriam-Webster, though labeled archaic). I didn't know the RINSO cross (RIMSO seemed plausible enough), so that square gave me a lot of pause ... but we got there eventually.
- 128D DELCO [AC___ (G.M. subsidiary)] — The only DELCO I recognize is Delaware County, PA ... but that's probably too regional to be in a national crossword?
- 112D BLOSSOM [Stop being buds?] — Cute wordplay clue ("bud" as in the flower precursor, not as in pal).
- 47D BOCCI [Italian lawn game] — I have only ever seen this spelled "bocce" but *shrug*
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126 comments:
@Rafa completely captured my feelings about this one!
First, it was easy (knowing THE DOORS song was helpful).
Second, I was not happy that I never got a chance to discover the “bonus clues” answers. I breezed through the grid and the answers appeared. I was kinda looking forward to sussing them out. i might have been fun to do that or maybe not?
Third, me too for the most resistance in the SW. IMGUR and LIL MAMA were WOEs and I had IsIS before IRIS for a while.
Fourth, I agree that it was clever and well done with some fun clues but it was just disappointing. Mostly liked it.
I’ve been trying to like Sundays. Really, I have. I gave up on them for 5 years or so before returning to them about 6 months ago. Maybe not my best decision. I don’t have the patience to work these 21x21 grids, especially when, like this one, it is just a matter of “read clue, type in answer”. Making things worse is the fact that, though I may not be THE WORST typist in the universe, I certainly occupy a spot on the bottom tier. So there’s always a typo. Or 2. And tracking them down is so time consuming and boring that I just want to poke my eyes out but, because I’m doing this on a laptop, I don’t even have a pencil handy to implement that gory process. (OK, so maybe that’s positive thing.) This can happen with a 15x15 grid, too, but it just doesn’t seem so onerous. I can usually track the error(s) down. But tonight, even though I knew exactly what the trick was I couldn’t get the glorious (?) reveal without first hitting the check grid button and correcting my typos. Those opening doors are not so awesome when you have to “cheat”. I can try to rationalize this by saying that I know the problem is simply a typo (or in this case 2 typos) so it’s not really a cheat. But it is.
I know there will be a sizeable gallery out there asking, “Well, why didn’t you learn to type in high school like the rest of us?” Because Typing seemed so much more boring than Power Mechanics and Metalwork and my fave elective, Home Economics. (Yeah, cooking sounded like fun and I’m kinda motivated by fun.)
Anyway, I get psyched when I see Brandon Koppy’s byline on the puzzle so I was upset with the dull fill and the self inflicted disappointment re: the big reveal.
Got HOLESIN/THEWALL right away - my favorite hole-in-the-wall dive bar, Antonio's Nut House (the last one in Palo Alto, CA), sadly died a few years ago; then I moved to the other long downs. Quickly got BREAKTHROUGH/TO THE OTHER SIDE - that earworm will be with me for a while now - and knew it would have something to do with THE DOORS. The rest was pretty easy.
I read the notes, decided to ignore them and just solved it as a themeless. Two themelesses, actually, since the "wall" separated it into two puzzles. Without the extra clues, the puzzle was easy enough that this worked for me. But I wonder how this would have played for younger people. I was around when the Doors were on the charts, but are people nowadays more attuned to, say, Earl Sweatshirt?
I also had difficulty in the SW, mainly because IMGUR (115D) was a total WOE and I had LIL nas x before LIL MAMA for the 109D rapper.
At 103D I couldn't stop thinking about:
When you're starting to feel that an eel bit your heel
That's a moray
Thank you for creating a puzzle whose theme answer is well known to most of the older solvers like myself. I get frustrated by clues that ask me the title of a number one hit from some rapper I never heard of. Won’t know it, will have to look it up.
Felt like 2 Tuesday puzzles today. Easy enough to solve both but the connective tissue/theme was more a distraction (I know I should be on the lookout for that thing) than an enhancer.
I came here to confirm that there weren’t any theme clues or playful language hints for the hidden spanners. How strange!
Didn't like this. Essentially lots of micro-puzzles, some of which were super easy, some - for me - were not. Crossing ESOBESO with RINSO was a Natick for me. RINCO seemed as likely. Same with LOUDEST. Wanted LARGEST, ended up with LARDEST - SECA seemed as good as SECO, and ERHR as valid as ERHU (of which I've never heard). The SW was very hard - by then I was irritated enough to cheat.
I strongly believe that “How was the solve?” is a far more important question than “How impressive was the construction?” (And the solve was grand for me!)
But I don’t want to neglect that second question today, because Brandon’s crafting of this puzzle was superb:
• The skillful use of the entire grid. The East and West, from top to bottom, house the song title, and theme answer HOLES IN THE WALL. The center, from top to bottom, is occupied by the phantom THE DOORS, and the words connected by the letters of THE DOORS.
• The wordplay. Turning BEET and OVEN into BEETHOVEN, in effect, eight times. Plus the theme-related meanings in HOLES IN THE WALL, and BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE.
• The symmetry. Making this all work in the confines of a symmetrical grid. Also, in the black wall, the letters of THE DOORS are symmetrically spaced!
• The creativity. How did Brandon even come up with this multi-leveled theme? One involving melding pairs of words by adding a letter between them, not to mention a black wall, a band, and a song? Scintillating!
• The grunt-work. Coming up with those pairs of words, which included having them fit symmetry, so that, say, GOB / TWEENS, a three and a six, worked with MENSCH / IRS, a six and a three.
Impressive build? Very, and bravo Brandon!
BTW, Brandon must have thanked his lucky stars that HOLES IN / THE WALL and BREAK ON THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE break evenly in half.
I agree with @Rafa, and solving online means that there was also nowhere to put the "extra" letter, so somehow I had to mentally figure out what and where the missing letters were and keep that in mind. I found the task tiresome and ultimately gave up (the Note was open for me right from the start on the NYT Games website, where I usually solve, so I knew there were some hidden answers and got a few of them before just giving up). That mad the puzzle "meh" for me, and I knew the Doors song and got it with very few crosses. And HOLES IN THE WALL, which was a good answer. But the solving experience was okay at best. This would have been better solved on paper--or as @Rafa said, with the "bonus" clues the actual clues for the first half of the answer.
For the print version solvers, the central vertical line was solid black. I never considered writing over it; it doesn’t appear as the digital “gray.” Frustrating.
Your comment about "bocci" is absolutely correct. The Italian lawn game is called bocce. A similar game was played in ancient Greece and called boccia. On-line sources tell me that boccia was primarily played by people with physical handicaps and began to be played in the Paralymics in 1984.
Luddite that I am, I use the print puzzle. The central vertical is printed solid black. Very frustrating.
Damn, Agnes Varda is in the puzzle and Rex doesn't get to blog it?
The 1D clue led to THE WALL, which misled me to expect the band in question to be The Who. Kinda disappointed it wasn’t. Otherwise, solved as, in Rafa’s words, a “high word-count themeless,” which is not particularly fun on a Sunday.
The erhu is gorgeous. Here’s everything you need to know, in less than a minute:
https://youtu.be/X4pe2PqHU3Q?si=xHY8W_sX-Gr6BeIc
I felt like we stepped over the line from themed to a gimmick or outright stunt puzzle, which is usually not by forte. But I got all dressed up and came to the party, so I figured I may as well mingle.
Was introduced to a few interesting characters - most notably WEST EROS (what a name), ELPHABA (what an awful name), and IMGUR (omg, no comment on that one).
I wandered around for a bit - I even knew some of the propers on my own, like MACBETH, TOSCA and Bonnie RAITT (who I believe made an appearance recently, but that may have been in the LAT).
It seems like pretty much every day that you can find one of those “nobody ever says that, ever” words in the NYT puzzle - today I would nominate UVULAE, although I suspect that INPAWN may garner some interest as well.
So all and all, it wasn’t too bad - I met some new peeps, had a drink or two, and left early.
Same experience EXACTLY with IMGUR and LILnasx.... but I knew XL was probably wrong down there so I left it blank
Rafa - me too on being disappointed that after solving, I didn’t get to go back and look at the clues in the notes and solve them. Maybe another solution would be for the “wall” squares to turn gray or flash on-and-off or something so that you could then solve the eight extra clues. (The note would have to tell you what to do post-solve, and it wouldn’t work in print.)
Also agree with you that simple dupes don’t bother me - I almost never notice them.
Another part of the theme, I think: THE DOORS could represent actual doors in the wall where you can BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE. Imagine breaking down the doors, which you always see the cops do in the movies and which I would like to try once before I die.
Never saw the hidden clues. Got the revealers, understood the concept, but no way to implement it. Thus, endless short fill, mostly boring, some obscure. As Rex says, no whoosh. Why chop up the big puzzle this way? I don’t care about post hoc cleverness.
I enjoyed the puzzle... and because a couple corners away from the middle had me stuck for a while, esp. the SW (@Conrad), I had time to go down the middle and find the answers that matched the bonus clues, and figured out/confirmed that it spelled "THEDOORS"--that actually helped me finish the song title, cuz I do remember Jim Morrison belting out "BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE." So I enjoyed the theme and figured it out as I went. I suspect this is the difference between those of us who just leisurely parade around the grid not worrying about the time vs those of you who really monitor the speed of the solve.... a plug for moseying! Thank you, Brandon, that was quite a feat of engineering and an awesome solve!!!! : ) Thanks.
I love the double meaning of THE DOORS phantom-ly going down the center wall -- the band, yes, but also, each of those letters is literally a door through which an answer goes through.
What an utter disaster. What idiot thought up the animation spoiler.
More evidence that the NYTimes cares more about showing off its cutesy animation technology than presenting a solid puzzle that creates a challenging and enjoyable solving experiences.
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Apparently the NYTimes has forgotten this most basic truth.
I also have never seen it spelled bocci. I figured it’s another singular/plural error like panini/paninis instead of panino/panini. But never seen bocce pluralized in Italian. Kind of like playing a double header and saying you are playing soccers. Just doesn’t work in either language.
When a puzzle is way too easy and you don't have to bother with the theme at all to solve it... why even bother publishing it?
DNF because they don't know how to spell BOCCE. I spent forever looking for my error, but turns out it was the NYT error.
Rafa, once you choose to read the note after all the non-black squares were filled, you cede the right to complain that you didn't have time to read it pre-reveal. It's like when Rex solves Mondays downs only & then complains that the puzzle is too difficult for a Monday. Sorry, kids, but decisions have consequences.
Not all that familiar with The Doors's oeuvre (I was 7 in '67) so needed the crosses to suss out the lyrics. Enjoyed the bonus clues, too, though wanted to be able to enter the missing letters electronically in their black squares.
I always read the comments on a Sunday puzzle exactly for the frustrating, annoying reason you've mentioned - searching for TYPOS (especially in a Sunday-sized grid)! I've always been a fast typist - over 100 wpm - & got great jobs (first as a secretary in a previous life lol) but it can really bug the **** out of you when doing a puzzle - especially on Sunday! Thanks for sharing :(
A constructional masterpiece that unfortunately was not fun at all for this solver.
The thing about secret decoder ring puzzles is the view is never worth the climb.
"Bocce" is Italian and means the plural of 'ball'. It is also the name of a popular game. The singular of "bocce" is "boccia". "Bocci" is nothing.
I've got to start keeping track of how many times I can breeze through completely solving the grid, and have absolutely no idea what the theme is. Usually, with a theme, I look forward to the steps... Ah, could this be it?... Hmm, this looks promising... Oh, what a clever theme! This time: Grid complete, app plays the little jingle, and... what the heck was that??? No working back and forth. No icing on the cake. No cherry on top. Theme here is completely superfluous.
Generally agree with the tedium of finding a typo on Sunday, but today it was a benefit. I had the grid all filled out, but with something wrong, so it didn’t autofill THE DOORS. I had a chance to find it myself to reveal the bonus answers. Btw, the typo was really a Natick, because I never watched GOT, and I thought OR DOCS made more sense than ER DOCS for leaving you in stitches, so I had wOsteros as the fictional land.
That the hints or notes were irrelevant left me feeling kind of meh. As above I did appreciate a NODAT The Doors Classic. As a side note, last week on vacation some one was blasting Touch Me at the pool and I was singing along and really getting into it. My 18 yo was both stunned and embarrassed.
Got the trick, but THEDOORS and their song were unknown to me (when I heard the excerpt, I was glad I didn't know it). Still managed to get everything except the SW corner. Another Sunday DNF for this octogenarian.
Seems pretty egregious for the app to just solve the meta puzzle for you! Maybe someone in the games department should have thought through the presentation of this puzzle a little more thoroughly.
Mom: Ralphie, get down here to dinner right now.
Ralphie: Just a second, Ma. I'm DECODDERRING a secret message that Orphan Annie sent me ..... oh wait, she also sent me the decoded message, so I don't even get the fun of trying to decode it. Well, maybe someday she'll edit crosswords for the New York Times.
WTF. Give us two easy puzzles with the promise that there will be an interesting third puzzle at the end. And then give us the third puzzle already solved? This was a boffo construction by Brandon Koppy which was utterly ruined by an editorial decision. I generally have rolled my eyes at the "fire Will Shortz" crowd, but today I've become a full fledged member.
In retrospect see this as a well designed construction with some fun clues and answers. Unfortunately, I know nothing about The Doors! One great hole in my music knowledge, tho not the only one for sure. Some other clues/answers were also tough for me: ERHU, IMGUR, LIMAMA for example. On the other hand, I got a kick out of recognizing RINSO, TUSHIE, TOSCA, TWEENS, and the like.
Tantalizing missed (or, perhaps, considered and rejected) cluing opportunity — Jim Morrison is, of course, buried in the PÈRE-Lachaise cemetery in Paris…
Groan
It was solid black for us, too. The grey boxes only appear at the reveal upon completion.
WOW!
This puzzle ROCKED! Fun too that I tended bar at the HOLEINTHEWALL Topanga Corral (inspiration of Roadhouse Blues) and love THE DOORS.
Didn’t include a proper revealer clue? Should have let us suss out the hidden squares? Two places have LIE? (shout out to the recently deceased Lou Christie). (The) Who CARES?!
Like MR MOJO RISIN himself, it was interesting/clever/brilliant on so many levels!
WELL DONE! (whereas, after most Sundays, I sigh, “well, done.”)
Rafa, the title is Break ON Through
Doing this on the app on my phone, I rarely tap the "info" button...so for me, I had no idea why the longer answers were even there. I never saw the 8 hidden clues. A big miss, in my opinion..left me feeling meh. Just felt like two side-by-side puzzles.
Mine was always "When an eel bites your arm and it causes great harm, that's a moray".
Completely agree
Hey All !
Well ... I give props to Brandon for the cleverness and ability to be able to pull this puz together, but (isn't there always a but?[or ASS]) the gist of the final boss level, as it were, supplied nothing to the solve. There were two "Revealers", but essentially no Themers.
We all know (OK, maybe only some of us) that BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE is a DOORS song, but that doesn't help. Then HOLES IN THE WALL indeed let's you know that the solid line of Blockers down the middle will have some sort of answer going from the West side of grid to the East side of grid, but there's no indication of where. I know what you're thinking, "But Roo, they gave you clues for the wall-breaking answers." True, but after ferreting out the rest of the puz, who wants to figure out more clues for words that aren't there? No patience for that here. And as Rafa said, it's irrelevant anyway, as the puz filled in (or got rid of) the Blockers for you whilst finishing online. I'm sure that had to be done for the digital-ability, but after all Brandon's hard work, seems to miss the point.
And puz is 23x23, which if you're solving on your phone, good luck trying to see the tiny squares. A 21x21 puz gets you 441 squares, while this 23x23 puz gets you 529! Don't know the % change, my math hath left the brain to figure that out.
So an ambitious puz, nice fill with all the constraints, great find to have 8 sets of answers that by themselves are legitimate things, and to be able to be another answer simply by adding a single letter. And to have to find 8 of them with particular letters to spell out THE DOORS. And to include two Revealers. So basically there were 24 Themers and 2 Revealer, if that's how you want to look at it. And a constructor who sweated, cursed, and toiled greatly to bring a puz that didn't have the Oomph it should have.
Welp, enough blather outta me.
Have a great Sunday.
No F's - In an oversized grid. 529 squares, and you couldn't get an F in there? Granted, lots of Theme to work around, but still ...
RooMonster
DarrinV
Since I expected the cutesy animation to ruin the gag at the end, I took a screenshot of the grid before I put in the last letter and then looked back at the bonus clues and figured out where they went.
But then I had to go looking for a typo anyway, which eventually I found was because I had (IMO correctly) entered BOCCE (and just assumed I didn't know what the resulting NOSER was in reference to).
Came here to see what on earth TWOMAN meant. I thought it had to be some newspeak gender identification or something.
I now see that it’s not T-Woman, but Two-Man(which honestly could also be a newspeak gender identification.
Was really hoping for Pink Floyd as the band after I found The Wall clue.
NOSER crossing BOCCE would've been a perfectly valid answer. I had BOCCE and did a double take on [Gentleman's disagreement?] -OSER.
Break ***ON*** Through (To The Other Side) !
Tried to enter "The Doors" in the vertical black bar but the app would not allow me to type it in? Meanwhile the clock just kept ticking...
I think you may be missing Rafa’s point about not reading the second set of clues. Sure, he could have read them first, but he didn’t. And his point is that he didn’t need to. They were not at all necessary to solving the puzzle — therefore, his suggestion to clue this puzzle’s theme answers differently. Although I read the clues ahead of time, by the time I went back to re-read them and see how they fit in, I was simply noting how they created longer answers from those shorter ones I’d already completed. In other words, I read the second clues twice before finishing the puzzle and still have the same complaint as Rafa about them because they weren’t necessary and the puzzle solved like a themeless.
I'm totally on the side of @RK in NJ today as my printed version didn't suggest any way for me to connect the two sides. By the time I had finished struggling with all the tiny numbers and had everything filled in, I had no interest in trying to see where BEETHOVEN might be, although I see now that I could have. So it goes.
Today's no-knows were like others'--IMGUR, ELPHABA (never remember her), guessed the LIL but would never have guessed the MAMA, didn't know RUNTS as a candy nor OSHEA the actor.
Today's highlights included the clue for ("Two-stringed Chinese instrument") and the answer ERHU, which I'm sure exists outside of crosswords (probably) but especially the classic OLIO, which I haven't seen if forever. Hello old friend, nice to see you. These things take me back to my early solving days, when crosswordese was plentiful and The Doors were popular.
Brilliant feat of construction BK, for which I Bestow Kudos upon you but this is one of the few times I wish I had tried solving on line. Thanks for a healthy dose of fun.
E
I solved this puzzle on paper and thought it was an absolute tour de force. The "bonus" clues were right at the top, and even though the conceit of the puzzle was clear from the outset, the bonus question were fun. I'm sorry my app-solving puzzle mates did not have them properly displayed. I thought the real genius of this puzzle (or maybe it's just my brain) was that it seemed that the answers were harder in the sections crossing the revealers, and that EVEN WHEN I KNEW I was looking for phrases crossing the "tunnel", some just wouldn't parse. MENSCH / IRS, I'm looking at you! I'm probably expressing that wrong, I hope you know what I mean. Thanks to Mr. Koppy for a very diverting and fun puzzle, and I'm hoping the editorial team of the Times finds ways to give the digital solve all the elements of the paper one.
DNF. Too much of an unpleasant slog. Hard to get excited about a corner with IMGUR, OLIO, ICH and UVULAE.
@Rafa. Thumbs up for "morose" Eeyore. I felt cheated, too, on the theme. Now I know how Ralphie felt when he got his Little Orphan Annie DECODER. However, I really enjoyed solving this. Lots of clever cluing. Very entertaining.
Yep — solved on paper and had fun finding the missing connector letters for the long acrosses/band name. Brilliant construction!
The Wall would lead me to Pink Floyd, not The Who. Why does everyone keep leaving out the ON. It's Break ON Through to the Other Side.
You mean Pink Floyd?
I hung around long enough to see that BOCCi was misspelled and to glimpse the hideous IMGUR, whatever that is. I saw and wrote in HOLES IN and knew that the rest of the phrase would be THE WALL. And, bingo, that long black dividing line was a "wall", wasn't it? I jumped over the wall to check THE WALL at 114D and saw, via BELLOW that yes it was THE WALL. So I knew the conceit then and there.
The fill was tedious and boring and felt sloggy on the left side of the wall. I wasn't having fun. I was solving as a themeless and I knew life would only get interesting once I crossed the Great Divide. But would it get interesting enough? The answers would link together obviously, but would I care? I didn't really think so, and therefore I stopped.
It’s Westeros, one word. Elphaba’s been the main character of the second-biggest musical of the past two decades.
I was negative-12 in 1967. Don’t think you can complain that a song that was that huge of a hit is unfamiliar because you were in grade school when it came out. It was on the ubiquitous Forrest Gump soundtrack.
So funny to me that one person credited not knowing the song to being 6 when it came out, and another to being in their 20s when it came out.
Me too, Rafa! I glance at the title of Sunday puzzles, but this time decided to read the small print later, in case it gave too much away. Unfortunately the app solved the fun part of the puzzle before I was ready. I like your solution better.
Two-man bobsled/sleigh has been in the Olympics for decades.
can't we do better than the "change a letter and say amen" clues. Olav, oval? Ok, the trick has been done to death. Bocci is an editing failure. The puzzle reminded me of another song, "Hey look at me." 8 extra clues? they could have skipped that if THE DOORS had appeared as you filled in the clues. The extra clues was a waste of time. tl;dr
BOCCI? No. Got that square wrong because had the correct spelling, BOCCE. BOCCI turns out to be a much less common variant. If a puzzle is going to use a variant, that should be indicated in the clue during the editing process.
100% agree. It just felt like doing a themeless Sunday.
If you like theme gimmickry you probably loved this one. If not, not so much…
I feel @Rafa hit most of my same thoughts! It's too bad the theme was toothless because this was quite a feat of constructing and I actually thought many of the bonus clues and answers were quite fresh and clever - a shame to relegate them to post-solve afterthoughts! And BOCCI is just wrong. Google claims it is a rarely-used North American Anglicization, so the clue needed an "alternative spelling" added - but I just saw a massive missed opportunity to cross BOCCE with NO SER and clue the latter as "Gentlemen's disagreement, in 15-Down?" Fans of the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) books (and there are a LOT of them, particularly in crossworld) will be aware that Ser is the alternative spelling of Sir used for knights in that series, and crossed with the *correct* spelling of bocce this would have been gettable-enough for a Sunday and a fun way to tie back in to the already-present WESTEROS! It's sort of tearing me up inside that no one on the editorial team thought to do this and decided to leave us with the contemptible BOCCI instead...
Side note - anyone know what's happened to Patrick Berry and his Sunday contributions
As a long time devotee of the Doors, I couldn’t have enjoyed this more. I thought it was a nice idea, very well-executed. Good job!
I’ve never been able to nail the “come ons” in that iconic beginning. Good job if you nailed those!
The first time I heard the Door’s front man’s name it was in the phrase “Late Great Jim Morrison.” And I wore their albums out for years. It’s never too late to join the cult!
First - I don't like needing instructions to do a puzzle. But I did like this one except for ERHU, IMGUR, ELPHABA - I'm sure there are more b/c even though I typed VEERRY SLOOWLY, I'm off to find my typo :( on a Sunday sized grid which I solved as a themeless. BTW - loved the Doors especially Jim Morrison (RIP)
Is there a reason people don't post their times?
I am with PDG. Where is Patrick Berry? I always love his Sunday Magazine offerings.
Got it! Thank you Brandon - I enjoyed it a lot :)
Hi everyone, Colin here (at work, so am not logged in) -- I actually liked this puzzle. It helps that I have always liked The Doors, but it took me a little while to suss out what it (HOLESIN THE WALL; BREAKONTHROUGH TOTHEOTHERSIDE) all meant. My only (minor) gripe was in the west, with the PPP crosses (ELON, ROKU, RUNTS), even though I know Elon University but then was debating about ROKU vs RAKU and was only vaguely aware of RUNTS.
I solve the print version so did not have the issues folks did with the online version.
My dad will see this puzzle in a couple of weeks, and I suspect he will not like this at all. But I enjoyed this a lot.
Your comment made me laugh thanks for the chuckle (let's see if I can post the song now - ???
https://youtu.be/8lVqEchxIxw?si=tS-n3ypCmr4foq-S
Used to go to Antonio's back in the 90s. Thanks for reminding me.
My random solve jumped me around for a while before getting a foothold, of all places, at TWO MAN, 147A. I whittled away at this and finally got it finished, surprising myself when it turned out to have no errors. And then I decoded the 8 clues and got THE DOORS (which actually helped me find MEN'S CHOIRS). I enjoyed the decoding process the most out of the entire puzzle.
Nice job, Brandon Koppy!
Bonus clue #8/New bride, quaintly. Quaintly indeed! This one mostly skewed old and finished on this ancient reference. Shout out to all the (DIS)HONEST WOMEN out there! You know who you are.
Decoder ring is the actual answer. Something old farts could find at the bottom in the cereal box. It’s a noun. Not a verb.
I haven't read every comment, but @Rafa and the ones I have read keep making the same error: it is BREAK *ON* THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE
I’m not as jaded as a lot of you. It’s not something I critique to the nth degree. It’s better than what I could have done and I thought the theme was clever, new, and well executed. (I do it in the magazine by hand.)
It kinda seems like people are taking a weekly puzzle waaaay too seriously. It’s Sunday! Relax. It doesn’t have to be prefect to be enjoyable.
There were a few clues I rolled my eyes at, but big-picture-wise it was fun. That’s all I ask. (And I will defend Will to my grave. He is excellent at his job. Perfect? Nope. But excellent.)
@ Southside
Did you know that ELPHABA is a play on the name of the author of the Oz books, L. Frank Baum?
OMG. The song is "Break on Through (To the Other Side)". And since we do it the old fashioned way (we buy the paper) we were able to seek out the special answers. Thought it was fun, and the easy nature of it allowed completion quickly and smoothly.
Criticizing others’ puzzles with a not-quite pun for a pen name. Ok…
A ver si está bien.
I agree the extra clues were a bust on the electronic version. A sign should have popped up to give me the opportunity to break through the holes in the wall rather than doing it for me. And I imagine the paper version meant you might never have seen the doors at all.
I never enjoyed The Doors music, but Morrison as a person and poet were a bit more interesting. We should've had a Pyramus and Thisbe reference if we're poking through walls.
This solve kept my attention and flew by quickly. More or less similar sticking points to Rafa. For the whales, I had LARGEST, then LONGEST, finally LOUDEST, and I am in shame as I recently finished Moby Dick. Then the knot of INPAWN / ESOBESSO / RINSO made for rough waters.
DEMONS are real and running the federal government, so why are we calling them imaginary fiends? OVENS accept all children in notable fairy tales. I'm a [Big hunk] but please don't call me GOB; I actually ate a Big Hunk last week and it felt like cannibalism. Lovely to see St. Bede in the puzzle and be reminded I never made it through grad school.
Nunna dis and NO DAT.
SCHISM rests happily on my favorite word list between IDYLS and SHEBANG.
People: 16
Places: 4
Products: 11
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 12
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 52 of 164 (32%)
Funnyisms: 7 🙂
Tee-Hee: Why we love his conducting as much as his composition: BEETHOVEN TUSHIE. ASSES. Sperm ... whales. SELL HONEST WOMAN (~). I DO SASSES.
Uniclues:
1 Entry on the Democrats' scratch pad, probably.
2 My weird meal at the farm-to-table restaurant.
3 Tree house access for diminutive procreator.
4 Plot for an adult film.
5 Me reading a plot synopsis (see above).
6 Had a near death experience.
1 TO DO LIST: GO ASK ELON (~)
2 ATE LOCAL TADPOLE CALVES
3 LI'L MAMA ROPE LADDER (~)
4 MENNONITE LIE ON UMA
5 AROUSED IN RESPONSE
6 WENT LIVE TO THE OTHER SIDE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Turn it down from 11. SNARL HAIR METAL.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This puzzle was rated "easy," but solving it meant knowing the name of a particular singing group and also the title of one of their songs. Obviously, if a solver knew neither, the puzzle couldn't be easy. I would wager that if the editors asked 100 people at random who "The Doors" were (are), fewer than 10 would know.
Wasn't complaining that I needed the crosses. Just sharing my solving experience
@Anonymous 12:10 PM
@egs knows that ... he just refuses to take English seriously.
23x23 164-worder with partitioned-in-two puzgrid. With afterthought doors clues. Mighty different. Like.
Only thing, is ... all the doors lead from left to right. Altho, M&A did uncover one possible [but kinda ugly] right-to-lefter, at the SSR PRISON tunnel.
staff weeject pick: RSS. SSR prison door site.
some fave stuff: The DECO(D)ERRING door. NOWIGETIT. Clues for: UPARROW, TODOLIST, NOSIR.
Thanx for the two 11x23 almost themeless SunPuz solvequests plus the theme-clued afterlife, Mr. Koppy. Three puzs in one. Primo & clever constructioneerin job.
Masked & Anonymo10Us
... and now for one themeless puz with no after-tunnelin...
Stumpy Stumper:
"Wiener Dog Runt #77" - 16x3.5 12 min. themeless:
**gruntz**
M&A
@Rafa, @jae and others - when I was about halfway through the puzzle, solving on the app, I started to fear the very thing that frustrated you - that some squares or words would light up and give away something crucial that I wanted to figure out for myself. So I took a screen shot of what I had, took out the mag from our dead-tree edition of the Times, and used mark-up to fill in the rest of the grid on my iPad while looking at the paper-version clues. Yes, I will go to some lengths....
Anyway - what a puzzle! One definitely after my own heart in its complexity and rassle-worthiness. I used the bonus clues to get T-H-E-D, realized it had to be THE DOORS, then had fun sussing out where the O-O-R-S were going to be--admittedly having success only with guessing HONE-S-TWOMEN and having to stare at MENSCH-IRS for quite a while. Solving would have gone faster had I known the name of the song, but figuring it out from the theme was part of the fun.
@Andy Freude 7:43 AM
Thanks for the ERHU link. Next stringed instrument I need to add to my collection.
If my math is correct, about 28 per cent of the squares on the grid are occupied by letters in the various gimmicks. That is a pretty high number. Maybe a record?
Yeah…I figured that out. I was stuck thinking bobsleigh was ALSO some kind of new identity category
@SouthsideJohnny. I like your analogy of wandering about at a party looking to mingle. It's the way I do most puzzles, dressed up in my crossword best, drink in hand, wandering from room to room looking for an interesting conversation. Am not a GoT fan so WESTEROS was a mystery and I sort of knew ELPHABA and her name stuck because I had met her years ago in a New York theatre. IMGUR just confused me, even though I am sure I have met it before, Looked it up post party and discovered the "g" is soft and so, though Wikipedia doesn't explicitly state this, I assume it is some techie's "clever" rendition of "imager". At least I learned something. Usually a good thing.
As for UVULAE, ugh. INPAWN caused me to wince. And BOCCI, too.
From a technical perspective, the theme was completely irrelevant in the app. I solved all the clues and when I finished, the theme answers simply appeared. If I was I supposed to fill in THE DOORS to complete the puzzle, it wasn’t necessary — it just happened. That seems weird.
The top right corner of the NY Times Sunday Magazine has always been occupied by a dud numeric or geometric puzzle. Why not replace it with something puzzlers actually enjoy? Get rid of Dixo and replace it with one of Patrick Berry’s great word-based puzzles like Crazy Eights, Jelly Roll, For Starters or Loose Ends.
Got the all parts of the theme before fully finishing the grid, so saw the animation (whee?) but nearly DNF due to the crosses "LATE TAG" with "GESTE" with "LIL MAMA."
As for the rapper, neva-hoida-ver of course, but with any NYT rapper it's 99.99% a sure thing that the missing word will be LIL. But not knowing "GESTE" and having misspelled MORAY EEL as "Morey" (as in Amsterdam), I'm looking at L(?)ETETA__ and running the alphabet on the last letter to no avail. A brutal and painful finish.
I started solving last evening after supper, but got bored and tired (as often happens with Sunday) so just walked away (which hasn't happened for ages). Finished solving this morning, and it was a slog as Sundays seem to be lately. Maybe I'll do like @Les and take a Sabbatical from Sundays (hah). Finished with some sloppy errors: DOTS for 5 down, crossing ONE SEC at 21 across, which if I'd been paying attention produces Shakespeare's little known play MECBETH. And ERRANT at 70 across which is an adjective but matches the clue.
And jeez once again a lot of Unknown Names: OSHEA SCOTT WESTEROS SHEL ELPHABA AGNES STBEDE RUNTS IMGUR ESOBESO LILMAMA TINA! And "Classic detergent brand" I've never heard of: RINSO! RINSO??
I had JIVE before AAVE and thought: haven't seen that word in a while!
Frankly, I'll bet either 99 or 100 would know, depending on the luck of the draw for the survey.
I did enjoy this one a lot. @Les S. More, I have the same typing issue, but do not share your Sunday malaise. Rafa, the song is Break ON Through...an anthem of my youth, so I am a little sensitive about that.
Agree completely!
"Break On Through" may be considered a Doors classic today, but it was far from a "hit" ("huge" or otherwise) in its own time. It struggled to No. 126 on the Billboard pop charts -- that was it. "Light My Fire" from the same album (the Doors' first), hit No. 1 and stayed there for three weeks. basically launching the band's career.
As much as I enjoy music clues/themes (even allegedly "obscure" ones), I thought this one was a little bit unnecessarily arcane. Not only did the solver have to recognize the Doors as a classic rock act (a reasonable thing to expect, I suppose, but still a somewhat specialized knowledge nugget); s/he had to recognize the name of a particular song that wasn't even exceptionally well-known in its day. I'm guessing that most latter-day aficionados of '69s-era pop music familiar with the Doors would recognize the names of "When the Music's Over," "The End," "Love Me Two Times," and maybe "People Are Strange," along with "Light My Fire," before they'd think of Break On Through."
Cute gimmick, but as usual I was flummoxed by the friggin' names and brand names -- IMGUR, ELPHABA/AGNES (!), SECO, ERHU, ROKU, PERE . . .and technobabble acronyms like RSS didn't help matters, either.
I did find that the eight answers breaking through the wall were relevant to the solve. Was having trouble parsing the long downs that make up the song title because the Northeast and Southwest were giving me a little resistance. Spelling out THE DOORS got me BREAK ON THROUGH and TO THE OTHER SIDE.
Maybe for app users this was tolerable ( though what does BEETHOVEN have to do with anything?), but the print version it was completely unsatisfactory. The black squares stay black, the crossings might as well not exist. Worse yet, on page 3 of the front section of the paper the NYT printed a laborious explication of the puzzle's gimmicks which would have totally spoiled the solving for anyone who had the misfortune of seeing it before the puzzle. Not even a spoiler alert!
Couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t show as completed. I searched and searched for my mistake. Couldn’t find it- had to reveal: Bocce instead of BOCCI. I really did not enjoy this puzzle, groaned when I opened it and saw that big black line down the middle.
Btw, it's BREAKONTHROUGH not BRAKETHROUGH. On the song and in the puzzle.
Glen Laker
ER vs OR
They are equally likely because doctors do stitch cuts etc in ER’s.
About naticks. Can’t be a natick as defined by Rex because GOT had a large audience and Rex set an objective standard for a natick. His definition is online. But people here say personal natick But the cross is not unfair
Les S. More
About typos
Until six months ago when illness forced me to lie down a lot more ( after 50 years of doing the puzzle only in the dead tree edition) I have been forced to tolerate the Times phone app. The app slows me down because I find it extremely awkward The Apple keyboard is not designed for me anyway. So lots of typos.
Fortunately with the Sunday puzzle, I can lie down and do it in the dead tree edition. I don’t have to waste time looking for typos because I either got the answers or I didn’t I can see how annoying it would be to look for typos on a Sunday puzzle!
Solved in print so I had to grind it out, figured out what to do with the extra clues, (Beethoven was a giveaway) had an oh ! moment when it spelled the doors (love them) then backtracked to put in break on through” to the other side (not “break through guys!!!) - the note is unavoidable in print….
First, the column correctly pointed out a fairly obvious error. It's BOCCE, not BOCCI. More importantly, the cross worked fine as BOCCE since NOSER works just as well as NOSIR. Ser is a common variant of SIR. Solved the puzzle but this was just flat wrong.
Nicky boy
Bocce is played by many Italian Americans and their friends
(When I was a kid in the early sixties I only heard of elderly immigrant men playing it). I didn’t realize it has spread to other Americans. Just to clarify, I never heard of an association with handicapped people. As for the spelling, bocce is the Italian spelling but inevitably it the US the spelling is varied. I have seen boccie where I live but I am sure people spell it bocci. I don’t like it but English does its own thing.
Yes! I'm usually annoyed when the desired reaction is more "wow nice construction" than "I am so smrt," but this was SO impressive. Elegant and meaty.
That said, the clues were too easy, so the solving experience was not really that satisfying. I'm glad to have witnessed it, but I miss doing harder puzzles.
@rafa DELCO - Deluth Electric Company, a car parts manufacturer
Agree with those whofound the SW unworkable, but I also couldn't get traction in the NE. So I pitched it in the trash, and am glad to have done so as I now learn the theme revolved around a song by the Doors, of whom I was never a fan.
I steal the magazine late in the day from the bottom-most paper. Then I do it in pen. This way I see my mistakes and have lots of scribble room. I start writing lightly and then make changes as I go. Often it looks pretty crazy when I'm done. But I never cheat, I never give up, and eventually, I get them all. It's one of the greatest joys of my life.
@LesS-I couldn’t agree more with your comment that big grids just spell big trouble for those of us who never learned to type without looking! Sheesh! As a woman, being able to touch type (I think that’s the term) 50 years ago meant a young lady lawyer might not get a secretary assigned - “you type, right? Great it will save the firm $ since you won’t need a secretary.” True story and the reason I refused to take typing in Junior high and high school.
@pablo: I sang that to myself too!
Break On Through (to the Other Side) is the opening track on The Doors' self-titled debut album, a huge seller at the time (I was born the week Light My Fire was at #1), and still a popular album today, used record stores can't keep them in stock. Even if the single struggled, it's the first song you hear on one of the most beloved classic rock albums, so not exactly a deep cut.
Exactly the reason I never learnt to type.
Loved solving; loved the intricate elegance of the completed grid.
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