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Word on a French wine label / MON 7-21-25 / Situation Room grp. / Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE / Muscle used in pull-ups, informally / What two toddlers should learn to do / What an angry customer may leave
Monday, July 21, 2025
Constructor: Katy Steinmetz and Rich Katz
Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)
Theme answers:
- TOUCHDOWN PASSES (16A: Successful throws to the end zone)
- THE EVENING NEWS (21A: Regular 6 p.m. broadcast of daily events)
- AIRPORT SHUTTLES (38A: Vans from hotels to terminals and back)
- SPELLING ERRORS (50A: Their are fore of them hear in this sentance)
Elias Koteas (/ˈɛliəs kəˈteɪəs/; Greek: Ηλίας Κοτέας; born March 11, 1961) is a Canadian actor who has performed in lead and supporting roles in numerous films and television series. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film Ararat (2002).He is known for playing Alvin "Al" Olinsky in the Chicago television series franchise. Among the prominent films in which he has performed are Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Crash (1996), Fallen (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Shutter Island (2010). (wikipedia)
• • •
The fill is of the short and bland and overfamiliar variety, with a couple of valiant attempts to liven things up with "Z"s (???). Sadly, shoehorning "Z"s into the grid doesn't actually do much, excitement-wise, so mostly what we have here are stale 3s 4s and 5s. Nothing exceedingly horrible (except maybe the "-IE" spelling of TEENIE), but nothing to get excited about, or even mildly interested in. TSAR ENOLA BTS URL and on and on. The north is particularly bumpy, with NO TIP topping a lineup that includes ACHOO THO, OCD, NAH ... outside the themers, there's nothing (zero, zilch) over five letters long in this whole dang grid. That makes for particularly unspicy fill. Gotta make your grids more interesting than this.
As for difficulty, there isn't any. The toughest answer for me, weirdly, was the one where the clue gave me the letters to anagram!!?! (46D: Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE) (ELIAS). At first I thought it started with "S" because I had DENI- at 45A and thought maybe it would be DENISE (as usual, I solved Downs-only, so couldn't see the Across clues). Then, when I knew it started with an "E" ... I couldn't see any name but ELISA in those letters, and thought they had screwed up the clue ("Man's name???" Uh ..."). If you can't think of a famous person with a name, maybe don't use the name! But that's it for toughness. I got the alphabet soup initialism right at 35D: Situation Room grp. (NSC) (National Security Council) on my first try! I had SLEET before SLUSH (3D: Watery snow), but that's really it for screw-ups. Really rare to have so few screw-ups in a Downs-only solve. There's usually a certain amount of stumbling and fumbling. But not today.
Bullets:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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- 17D: One-named singer of "If I Could Turn Back Time" (CHER) — late-80s "rock" aesthetics were ... something. I watched The Lost Boys (1987) last night for my weekly Movie Club (started during early COVID and still going strong), and honestly you could swap those boys out for CHER's backing band here, no problem, all leather and long hair and ... what not:
- 32D: Muscle used in pull-ups, informally (BICEP) — still not comfortable with this supposed singular of biceps, since "biceps" is, in fact, singular. BICEP is a back formation (an invented spelling based on the fact that "biceps" looks plural because of its "s"-ending). The clue does say "informally." I'd prefer "substandardly," but that's even less of a word than BICEP.
- 36D: What two toddlers should learn to do (SHARE) — man I hated this clue. "Should?" What are you, Dr. Spock all of a sudden? There's no reason "two toddlers" (!?) should learn to do anything. Without a clear parental POV here, or some kind of hypothetical indicator, this clue reads weird. Prescriptive in a bizarre, unclear, off-putting way. Why not just [What parents might teach toddlers to do with their toys]. Less wordy, but in that vein. The "two" is also odd, and oddly specific. Honestly this clue looks like it's referring to some imaginary toddler joke, a la "how many toddlers does it take to ..." or "two toddlers walk into a bar ..." or something like that.
- 58D: Gossip, gossip, gossip (GAB) — no. GAB just means "talk" ("in a rapid, thoughtless manner"), not "gossip three times." Or even one time.
- 62D: Word on a French wine label (CRU) — often preceded by "Grand" or "Premier." CRU means "growth." CRU is also the informal name of the group of crossword solvers who have a welcome dinner at the ACPT every year (due to its punny connection to "crew" ... I think). Here's a picture of me at said dinner with CRU leader Michael Alpern. I forget why I'm throwing my arms in the air triumphantly. Perhaps because they clapped instead of booed when Michael announced my name.
That's all. See you next time.
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80 comments:
Nice easy Monday with a neutral theme. Maybe Rex will explain why he added a last name to the answer on the grid, when he wasn't identified in the clue.
There's ELIAS Howe, whose full name appeared in the first ever NYT Saturday I tried, and it also had an anagram clue. An "apt anagram" clue (I SEW A HOLE for the inventor of the sewing machine), but still.
Easy Downs-only except as a non-American, I didn't remember the Situation Room (I must have seen it in a bunch of puzzles by now) and the only NS- grp. I know is the NSA, giving me the valid entry SAABS at 43A. I had to do an alphabet run there. I assumed NSC and NSA were two completely different acronyms and my NSA guess was waaay off, but the N and S stand for the same word in both.
73 theme squares with two 14-letter themers? This layout is extremely restrictive.
How easy?
A B C, It's easy as
1 2 3, as simple as
do re mi, A B C, 1 2 3
Since this is a somewhat ho-hum puzzle, if you are looking for something esoteric, the last names of the two creators, as well as the editor, all end in TZ. Something you don’t see everyday, and certainly something you don’t look for.
Interesting that they are not only recycling the same answers, they are also just cycling through the same set of clues - but I guess there are just so many ways you can clue ADE, ACHOO, TSAR, I SEE and the like. Today being Monday also imposes a simplicity constraint, so no harm, no foul. We do occasionally get some original clues for OREO, so there is hope.
Nice to see one of the two one-named singers that I know on my own (Madonna being the other). I’ve also added ENYA, but only from XWorld - I wouldn’t recognize her even if I were sitting right next to her.
Anonymous 6:21, I made the same mistake, even though, as an American, I don’t have your excuse. I think I spent more time tracking down that one error than I did solving the rest of the puzzle.
Thought this was an easy, likeable puzzle that did no harm. And fortunately required absolutely no knowledge of Pokémon.
How many toddlers does it take to change a light bulb?
Timmy! Get off the table this instant!!
I'm old and can't kick the habit of watching THEEVENINGNEWS. We watch it while eating dinner. It's biased, uninformative, and overwritten. And full of ads for mysterious ailments. But it does have pictures of tornados blowing barns away and of cars floating down rivers of rain.
By the numbers:
ONE – PuzzPair© in the cross of BUTT and TUSH.
TWO – words that sound like letters (BEE, I SEE). Also, rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilaps (ENOLA, PITON). Also, that pair of abutting flat-bottomed boats (PUNT, BARGE).
THREE – Theme answers (TOUCHDOWN PASSES, AIRPORT SHUTTLES, SPELLING ERRORS) that are appearing in the Times puzzle for the first time in its 80+ years. “No,” you object, “They are all plurals. Surely the singulars have been used before.” And you would be wrong.
FOUR – Distinctly different meanings of “catch” in the theme. Impressive. Also, the number of points TSAR gets in Scrabble, while its other spelling gets 15.
This was a stellar Monday puzzle with its terrific theme, and with any possible no-knows easily crossed. This could make doing crosswords to a newer solver quite catchy, as it were.
Thank you, Katy and Rich for starting the week with spark, and congratulations, Katy, on your NYT debut!
Solved downs-only, and didn't dislike as much as Rex. Even catching THE EVENING NEWS-- I mean, it used to be an expression. So not currently but within my lifetime one might catch the evening news and, as it was a temporal event before streaming, one would have to catch it or miss it.
I'm not a Pokémon person so the revealer as such meant nothing to me--but so what? Gettable (downs only) and applicable. I think overall the meh fill was less objectionable because doing the downs meant I had to solve the meh crosses without the (meh) clues, so perhaps more interesting. So an OK Monday, with some long stuff and a few tricky ones (looking at ELIAS).
I had a problem with the k-pop supergroup clue -- BTS isn't a supergroup. It's extremely popular but even in the k-pop world a "supergroup" is a group comprised of members that were already famous. According to wikipedia, all but one member of BTS made their debut as part of the boy-band. So categorically not a supergroup
Writing "sentance" is a spelling error. Using "their" instead of "there" is a Grammatical error, as is "fore" in place of "for" and "hear" for "here." Thus, the clue is totally incorrect. Fail.
Any fellow computer nerds irritated by google.com being called a URL? A "URL" has a scheme. https://google.com is a URL. google.com by itself is just a domain name.
Did this on line this AM. thus saving another tree, or maybe a branch or something. I still prefer a No. 2 pencil with an eraser.
Halfway through this one I was thinking--I could do this downs-only or acrosses-only. My one do-over was OFL's SLUSH for SLEET. Couldn't suss out a revealer but the CATCH angle works for me, close enough for crosswords.
OK Mondecito, KS and RK. More than Kinda Straightforward, not much Knowledge Required, but a nice one for beginners and it may attract new solvers, so there's that. Thanks for some breezy fun.
Since I’ve been hearing every detail of Pokémon games, shows and books (yes many books) for years, that revealer did make me chuckle. Not that I ever remember what I’m told about any of it. But that catch phrase is very distinct. I also live with my 87 year old mother who, believe it or not, has to catch the evening news with David Muir at exactly 6pm PST every night, no matter how many times I explain that it is 2025 and no one has to catch the news. So this made me laugh twice. I’ll give it that much, but not much more.
Watch PBS news (while you still can)
It’s rare I drop in long answers on my first pass (where I only fill in things that are 100% certain with no possible alternatives - usually proper names). So I got a thrill out of TOUCHDOWN PASS and GOTTA CATCH EM ALL.
However, I was in a rush this morning and made a lot of boneheaded moves that tripped me up later. SKY for BBC, IVOR for AZUR, FIFA for NCAA, SETS for REPS.
I don’t agree with any of Rex’ complaints about this puzzle. The theme is exactly what you’d expect for a Monday.
Hey All !
Nice MonPuz. Simple, wrapped up nicely. 41 Blockers, 4 more than normal max. It's the Cheater Squares. Well, almost. You do need the Blockers before and after the 14's.
My mom watches THE EVENING NEWS every day. I go over on Sundays, and end up watching it also. It's strange anymore, everything is all jumbled together. I can't be bothered by news, it's too depressing.
Welp, good ole F's get the snub today, yet there are two Z's. Crazy. I call B AND S. Har.
Have a great Monday!
No F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Vanilla puzzle, some good fill and some bad. BANDB reminding me of upcoming lake vacay, so that was a plus. OK theme. '90s feel
Need to disagree with OFL about the relevance of THEEVENINGNEWS. There is a small but loyal audience for this slot, many of whom have been watching for 60+ years. There's more choices now, but sofa/easy chair time after dinner has a long stubborn tradition that I expect will go on (though admittedly waning) another 20 years
Lewis, is NOTIP ok to use as semordnilap since 2 words?
Chin-ups work the biceps. Pull-ups work the lats.
I liked the long entries in a Monday that still managed to be appropriately Monday level. Don’t see that often. Deserves to be given credit for that.
“Abbreviation for an Army absence” is AWOL. Using this clue for MIA trivializes something that is far more than “an absence.”
Well, yes, if you don't catch the PASS, it's not a TOUCDOWN, is it?
And if you don't catch ALL the SPELLING ERRORS, you won't keep your copy editor's job very long, will you?
On the other hand, you can't possibly catch ALL the AIRPORT SHUTTLES. There are a plethora of them and you only want the one that's going to your gate -- right?
And as far as THE EVENING NEWS is concerned, the news ranges from alarming to depressing and back these days -- and if I don't CATCH EM ALL, I'll probably have a much happier evening.
A very loose theme -- which wouldn't matter if I hadn't been wracking my brain trying to come up with a revealer that fit all the theme answers. Which I completely failed to do. I know zilch about Pokemon, but I remembered GOTTA CATCH EM ALL from previous puzzles -- even though I don't know what it means.
A very easy puzzle that required no thinking to fill in. It was wondering about what the themers had in common that made it mildly interesting.
I don't know the first thing about Pokemon, but I thought the reveal phrase was cleverly apt, and I enjoyed some post-solve pondering of the various meanings of CATCH, especially the "catch the evening news (or a movie or show)" sense. Which took me to the OED, where I learned that the earliest usage of the "catch a ball" meaning dates from the 13th century, but that the "catch the news" sense only came on the scene in the 20th, originating in the U.S.
Also did down only but had one final error - crossed NSA (instead of NSC) with Saabs instead of Scabs. Frustrating!
I chuckled a bit when I read your post. I switched over to Lester Holt when he was still an option. I can’t watch David Muir anymore because there is nothing that ABC won’t over-hype. Everything is “Breaking News”, even if it happened yesterday and I read about it at length in that morning’s paper.
Yes. What you said about the evening news absolutely hits the nail on the head. The national news wasn’t on at 10 or 11pm (depending on time zone)…only the local news. So yes, before self-recorded tv…you had to “catch” the evening news. And…pretty much everyone DID try to on a daily basis.
Good point. Now that you pointed that out, it really is insensitive and tone deaf.
I hear ya. My only writeover was TEENIE instead of beaNIE WEENIE.
I was solving some older (early 2000s) puzzles over the weekend and one of the clues for ELIAS was: “Mount Saint _____ (Canadian/Alaskan peak).” As brutally obscure as that clue was, I’d take that a million times over the modern puzzle’s obsession with pointless anagrams. I’m pretty sure the only person who delights in anagrams that have no relevance to the word they’re anagramming is my friend Noor M., and she’s a, well…
How do I know the Pokemon slogan? I guess it has crept across my peripheral vision in the form of obtrusive ads. Anyway, I knew it, and would not have had a prayer of understanding the theme without it. I had been working with the idea that airplanes TOUCH DOWN, but that was not an idea that would take me anywhere. Things one can catch. Hmm.
BICEP is used "informally" for what? Biceps? Not something one would say, in my opinion. And I'm not sure why we to specify "in a good way," since SLAY means kill in either sense of the word.
I had 'nightly' before EVENING, even while questioning it; EURO fixed it right away, but it left those letters blotty. Except for changing the T to I, you can just add the bottom serif.
The high point of the puzzle was trying to figure out what ailment one would "treat" with bananas and ice cream; took a good 10 seconds to realize that treat was a noun.
Thank you! I was confused by this
Puzzle was a snooze, but thank you for the write-up, which reminded me that Some Kind of Wonderful, one of my all-time favorite rom-coms, exists. I feel like that movie is a lot of people's bisexual origin story, thanks to the competing hotness of Mary Stuart Masterson, Eric Stoltz, and Lea Thompson.
I made an earlier, longer comment, but I had forgotten to sign it. It hasn't posted yet; I will try to catch and tag it later.
ENOLA Holmes seems to have replaced the ENOLA Gay (the plane that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima) in puzzles; I guess the latter now seems to gruesome.
This one has posted, but not my earlier anonymous comment. Weird.
Oh my goodness, such carping about the theme on Rex's part. I thought it was kind of cute. I do think we just had "Sound heard before 'Bless you'" in another puzzle. Regardless, this was an easy breezy Monday, went very fast for me, and I have no complaints. I probably took the most time figuring out ELIAS.
When I'd ask my mother whether she regretted having children, she'd say "You're being RUED."
You can't be picky when you're in a vast Mongolian desert, so I decided to GOBI.
This was completely fine for a Monday except for GOTTACATCHTHEEVENINGNEWS. I don't gotta. Thanks, Katy Steinmetz and Rich Katz.
I totally agree! I found that clue disturbing and was surprised that Rex didn’t mention it. Must have missed it
I agree!
Easy. No WOEs and Sleet before SLUSH was it for costly erasures which could have been avoided if i’d checked the crosses.
Knowing the Pokémon slogan was helpful.
Reasonably smooth grid, fun theme, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did…but then I still CATCH the evening news.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #1029 was again, pretty easy for a Croce. The NE was the toughest section for me. Good luck!
@Mathgent -- If you can postpone your dinner as little as 15 minutes, you can watch THE EVENING NEWS at dinner and never again have to see an ad for a mysterious ailment.
At exactly the moment the news is coming on, put the program on "Pause". Go get dinner ready. Un-pause the TV as you sit down. You are now 15 minutes behind the program in real time -- ample time to be able to fast forward through all the ads. As you know, I'm almost terminally computer-illiterate, but zapping through commercials is a skill I mastered quite a while ago.
Your mother might find my (approx,) 10:37 reply to @Mathgent quite liberating.
Laughed at Rex on BICEP since I had exactly the opposite problem making BICEP work -- there's nothing informal about it. BICEP as a singular is attested back into the nineteenth century; no one but no one says bicepses or bicipites; no one in my hearing has ever said "my left biceps is bigger than my right" but everyone says "a deltoid and a bicep / A hot groin and a tricep / Make me, ooh, shake" (when singing along to Rocky Horror", not a great example of formality). I can only assume Rex does not talk or write or read much about biceps. The word Rex is looking for isn't substandard, it's non-technical, assuming there are technical anatomy people who use biceps as a singular because that's what they were taught and clinging to this kind of irrelevancy is part of subject dominance in all fields. If you want to be an antediluvian stinge with language, which to be fair is part of the game here, "BICEPS" is an adjective. So is brachii. But not once does Rex properly refer to the biceps brachii muscle! Substandard!
I don't know a thing about Pokemon so I solved as a themeless. Very easy, even for a Monday. Under 10 minutes. No complaints (NO TYPOS!), just surprised at the NYT with all the submissions they receive. Thanks to you both :)
Nice, pic, Rex!
My 22-month old grandson walks into a lot of things. He lives in London so he would more likely walk into a pub than a bar..
I agree with Rex that THE EVENING NEWS is an outlier but it didn't bother me all that much. This super easy (even for a Monday) puzzle flew by with only two erasures for me (SLe before SLUSH, SaABS before SCABS) so, a new personal best time even with my having solved it online, which usually adds time to my solve.
AIRPORT SHUTTLES - after 2024's ACPT, I took the bus from the Harlem train station to LGA. The new terminal was unfamiliar to me ; I was trying to get to concourse D and the bus scroll was telling me it was the next stop so when the bus pulled over, I got out. But I was only at concourse C and D was a long, long walk (maybe not even possible to get there on foot.) But the nice info people inside C explained about the inter-concourse shuttle which got me from point C to point D, whew! GOTTA CATCH at least one of them :-).
Thanks, Katy and Rich.
Relatively easy downs-only Monday solve with just a few hiccups. As a non-American, I have heard of both the NSC and the NSA so 35D held me up for a while because NSA gave me SaABS for my unclued 43A. Saabs have long been a favourite car of quirky intellectuals and, even though they are no longer made, I can imagine the whole NYTXW editorial team driving them. Quite possibly the Times has a fleet of rebuilt 9-3s at the disposal of Shortz and gang. Anyway, NSa became NSC and all was well with SCABS.
I’m not a fan of anagrams, so 46D ELIAS didn’t do much for me. And I associate GABbing (58D) with talking incessantly, not gossiping.
As I filled in SPUNK at 69A solely from the down crosses, I wondered just how it would be clued because, when I was employed as a graphic artist assigned to the features section of a fairly large Canadian newspaper, I worked under an editor who had immigrated to the country from England. She was a charming woman and a joy to work with until some writer would describe the subject of a story as having SPUNK, when she would hit the ceiling. Seems that the word has different meanings on different sides of the Atlantic. I’ll leave it to you to look up. (If @Gary Jugert hasn’t already had a go at it before I post in the morning.)
Rex,
Lots of people watch the evening news. Lots. In fact only news and live sports make the networks money. They’re whats’s keeping broadcast and basic cb,e alive. Not for long, I’ll grant. But the fact is the evening news is a money maker precisely because so many people watch it.
I forgot how awesome Cher is, I just watched that video twice in a row. I was in my 30s when that came out. I am 65 now... so true, If I Could Turn Back Time! Live your life... dont sweat the small stuff. Easy puzzle, btw.
Those are errors based on accidentally substituting homophones. I would sooner class those as spelling errors. See the answer given in the exchange here.
Four different kinds of "catches" ... this here puztheme only lacked the unwanted "catch a cold" type.
Which reminds m&e of our fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue:
{Sound heard before "Bless you!"} = ACHOO.
Bad puz starter: BTS.
Good puz starters: 3 U's, crammed into that there runty NW corner.
staff weeject pick: TMZ. No-Know. But, M&A's reaction to gossip websites would definitely include some Z's, I'd grant.
Primo quad weeject stacks, NE & SW, btw.
fave stuff: Well, there weren't but a couple of 6-longs, and that was it for the longball entries. Was kinda partial to: SPUNK. PONZI. The SPELLINGERRORS clue.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Ms. Steinmetz darlin & Mr. Katz dude. And congratz to Katy Steinmetz on her half-debut.
Masked & Anonymo8Us
... and now, always a tad more desperate than usual, ...
"Desperate Word Square #162" - 7x7 12 min. desperate runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Nancy, I think Dr A has already told her mother to no avail. Old habits die hard and even though I KNOW about this I rarely do it. There is pretty much nothing I have to catch on any given day on main network cable or cable in general, so that might be why. Probably a good thing because I plan to strong arm my husband into getting rid of cable and just go with Internet streaming and HD antennae (for old network channels).
As Ed Asner playing Lou Grant once said to Mary Richards: You have spunk. I hate spunk.
Hand up for the sentiments conveyed on this. I noticed that, too. It MIGHT be because we are so far removed from the Viet Nam war and the term has been thrown around casually for years when someone doesn’t show up somewhere…like, “Where’s John Doe? I dunno, didn’t hear from him about the meeting, I guess he’s MIA”. (Observed in my last few office years)
Les, I TOTALLY got stuck on your “non-American” sentence. You are a North American (as are Mexicans). I guess I have a weird pet peeve about how the U.S. has (maybe unintentionally) co-opted the term American (“I’m from ‘Murica”). I know/figure the options for reference were probably non-existent (Unitians?, Statesians?) but still it bothers me. To be clear, I’m not bothered that YOU said it. And actually, the ONLY thing that kept me sane with the whole Gulf of America thing was the fact that our two continents are “Americas”
Similar Downs Only experience, including SLEET first. But so much energy wasted on pedantic comments, especially about THEEVENINGNEWS. Yes, watching it isn't a thing like it used to be when I was young,but it's certa
why would anybody get booed at a crossword gathering that's hilarious - and yes this theme is non-literate lets say - I also find that glancing over all the clues to begin with is a real tell as to quality the more joy in the cluing the better the puzzle its just like cooking the ingredients make the meal
Older folks tend to watch evening news programs. The under-60 crowd has gravitated toward social media, which lack standards of accuracy and fairness. That's how Trump got elected...his lies and exaggerations were treated as fact.
@Barry: nice catch with the TZs!
@Beezer - there is definitely some validity to your point about its occasional common usage. That’s not the way it is clued though. Another in an unfortunate series of sloppy and inaccurate clues that have been occurring with somewhat disturbing frequency the last few weeks. It may finally be getting to the point where Shortz should step down. He’s had a great run, but does he really want to tarnish his legacy and go out this way ?
Definitely an easy puzzle, and I generally appreciated the Monday-level breeziness, as someone just barely old enough in the crossworld to feel the easiness of Mondays. But my one glitch in the end turned out to be that I apparently have never written the words GOBI or PONZI before and messed up the spelling of both where the crossed a foreign word and an abbreviation. That’s on me, certainly, especially when I realized that the abbreviation was IRS, so not one that I could claim not to know. Doh.
Hands up for solving down clues only, and having NSA crossing SAABS. I didn't get the happy pencil and had no idea where the problem was so I had to click "Check all letters". Sometimes I wonder if Will doesn't like the fact that some of us like to solve Mondays that way, and deliberately puts in traps for us?... nah, that's paranoia.
I thought the theme was just fine for a Monday. Though I guess it's fair to say that the only one where you GOTTA CATCH EM ALL is SPELLING ERRORS. I read lots of fiction books and I'm just astounded by how many spelling/grammar errors I see... often a dozen or so per book. Don't they have editors any more?
Beezer, I used to enjoy pointing out to people that Canadians are also Americans (of the North variety), but not anymore. These days I go out of my way to distance myself from the term. I love being a Canuck and I have a terrible fear of oligarchy. 'Nuff said, I think. No offense meant to the many millions of Americans who still support democracy, "the worst system of government, except for all the others."
Was happy to see 2D TROUT. Interesting fact, for those of you who don't fish, Steelhead and Rainbows are the same fish but Rainbows live out their lives in fresh water and Steelhead migrate to the ocean and come back (anadromous) to fresh water to spawn. Unlike salmon, they don't die after spawning and can do this many times. Catching a 4 pound Rainbow on a fly in a small river is a treat. Catching a 25 pound Steelhead on a fly is an event.
Probably not in real life, but in crosswords, where the two words are merged, I count them.
Made the exact same mistake and am also leaning on the non-American excuse
I see them ALL the time in my “local” big city newspaper. Not to mention grammar. Not to mention the flow of who, what, where, when. Okay. I sound like a curmudgeon. I will say I read a lot of books and don’t see errors…usually just in representations of “real speech” in portions of dialogue which may be grammatically incorrect.
Yeah. To get an accurate representation these days you have to access Al Jazeera, BBC, and other news sources. For U.S. I look at AP. Reading news requires work these days!
Jammon
I guess there is some joy in catching someone else in an error , or here in slang a fail which is even worse.
But playing games with words , like a lawyer arguing a losing case, doesn’t mean you are right.
Those mistakes as Anonymous said are spelling errors. as they are not spelled correctly for the meaning intended,
David Grenier
I don’t agree with Rex’s complaints either. Especially his rant about the evening news. My father HAD to catch the news. Nice that each catch had a different meaning.
Oh, Beezer, I despair. I subscribe to ""local" big city newspaper" for which I toiled for more than 20 years. Every time I read it I have to call out to my poor suffering wife about some egregious error that she doesn't care about but that I, after all those years, find offensive. I'd cancel the subscription but she still likes to read it. I check in about every 3 weeks just to see what hell understaffing and autocorrect can wreak.
Another late solve for me. I very much liked this. So many long answers and a couple of spanners to boot - very impressive to do that and keep a Monday difficulty level. Unlike @Rex, THEEVENINGNEWS may have been my favorite. Like others, I'm very impressed that "catch" has a different meaning in each themer - that's good stuff.
No real holdups and, while maybe not the most exciting solve, I enjoyed the ride and thought the theme clever.
Nice job Katie and Rich!
Si pudiera volver atrás el tiempo...
I have caught zero touchdown passes. I stopped catching the evening news in 1983. There's only so much stupid one can endure. You probably shouldn't catch any airport shuttles unless you're a member of the Aryan nation these days or they might drive you to an internment camp. And spelling errors, pfft, catch 'em don't catch' em, it's not gunna matter if you write something worth reading.
Apparently what toddlers actually do is run the United States government.
People: 5
Places: 2
Products: 9
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 2
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Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 76 (29%)
Funnyisms: 1 🤨
Tee-Hee: Our 5th-grader-in-charge knocked over the rest of the SLUSH pile racing to post this gem: TUSH, [Heinie], TEENIE-weenie, SPUNK, and BUTT.
Uniclues:
1 Jailbird wished he'd hired an older babysitter.
2 Haunting statement from gym rat.
3 Members of various fart orchestras get to know one another.
4 You may be a fish / and yet I wish / you could get a tattoo / of you / on your arm / that you don't have
5 Apoidea on Red Bull hits the road.
1 RUED TEENIE
2 I SEE REPS
3 BUTT BANDS GAB
4 TROUT BICEP ODE
5 WIRED BEE SPLIT (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: If one orc is good, lots of orcs is better. STU.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ah, there it is! My unsigned comment from yesterday.
Lovely puzzle. Gunk score <30%. Maybe Will is back.
But I agree with your comments on the theme and the government. Great gunk score though.
Disc golf?
There are no spelling erros in the clue for 50A; because they are intentional, they are not errors. Nothing grates on me more than BICEP.
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