.png)
___ Bradham, inventor of Pepsi / WED 8-13-25 / Newbery Medal-winning 1989 novel for children by Lois Lowry / "Too ___" (2024 #1 Hozier hit) / Covid-19, in slang / 2006 romantic fantasy novel by Stephenie Meyer / Acclaimed 2004 science fiction work by David Mitchell made into a 2012 film
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Constructor: Jared Cappel
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- CLOUD ATLAS (17A: Acclaimed 2004 science fiction work by David Mitchell made into a 2012 film)
- RAISIN IN THE SUN (22A: 1959 Broadway drama by Lorraine Hansberry, with "A")
- NEW MOON (36A: 2006 romantic fantasy novel by Stephenie Meyer)
- NUMBER THE STARS (48A: Newbery Medal-winning 1989 novel for children by Lois Lowry)
Number the Stars is a 1989 historical novel by the American author Lois Lowry about the escape of a family of Jews from Copenhagen, Denmark, during World War II.The story revolves around ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen, who lives with her mother, father, and sister Kirsti in Copenhagen in 1943. Annemarie becomes a part of the events related to the rescue of the Danish Jews when thousands of Jews were to reach the neutral ground in Sweden to avoid being relocated to concentration camps. She risks her life to help her best friend, Ellen Rosen, by pretending that Ellen is Annemarie's late older sister, Lise, who was killed after she was hit by a car. However, her former fiancé, Peter, who is partially based on the Danish resistance member Kim Malthe-Bruun, continues to help them.
The story's title is taken from a reference to Psalm 147:4, in which the writer relates that God has numbered all the stars and named each of them. This coincides with the Star of David, which Ellen Rosen wears on her necklace and is a symbol of Judaism.
The novel was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1990 as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." (wikipedia)
• • •
The longer non-theme answers come in very solid. I appreciate that. I didn't so much appreciate the false revealer at LIBRARY (41D: Spot to find 17-, 22-, 36- and 46-Across). I can see why you'd be tempted to turn this into a "bonus" themer, but it just ended up being confusing. "That's a terrible revealer," I thought, before finding out it wasn't the revealer at all. It also weirdly made the puzzle harder, in the sense that you had to have figured out the theme, or seen that the theme answers were all pieces of literature, before you could answer it. The short fill on this one felt a little weak. OLLAS? I know the word well, from crosswords of yore, but crossing ILSA, it felt like ... well, a crossword answer of yore. AHH crossing OOHS is not great. Cary ELWES continues to be fantastically overrepresented in the NYTXW, relative to his actual fame. Has he ever been clued via any movie besides The Princess Bride? Whoa, it turns out: yes! But not since 2016. And (bizarrely) the last five ELWES clues have been identical, word for word:
[I dunno ... I'd watch this ... I'm *gonna* watch this. If it's terrible, Don't Tell Me]
- 16A: "Casablanca" heroine (ILSA) — you'd think that after 30+ years of solving crosswords I'd've figured out the ELSA v. ILSA distinction. They used to both be film clues. ILSA was "Here's looking at you, kid," and ELSA was the lion from Born Free. Frozen has changed the primary cultural reference point for ELSA. I think if I can get my brain to think "Casablanca v. Frozen" instead of "Casablanca v. Born Free," I can lick this E/I confusion, because I know that Frozen girl is an ELSA ... which makes Ingrid Bergman an ILSA. (The fact that I know the movie ILSA, She Wolf of the SS exists isn't helping, frankly!)
- 61A: Type of word banned in North American competitive Scrabble in 2020 (SLUR) — I mean, good for competitive Scrabble, but you could clue SLUR so many ways that didn't make me think about (racial) SLURs. It's like this puzzle is going out of its way to be a downer.
- 49D: Letter-shaped fastener (U-BOLT) — I wrote in T-BOLT, is that a thing? Oh, it is? OK, I don't feel so bad now.
That's all, see you next time. And hey, if you wanna watch The Cat's Meow (starring Cary ELWES) with me, let me know. You can follow me on Letterboxd. You can follow me either way, actually. I basically watch movies non-stop, though my knowledge of movies from this century (esp. the '00s) remains very spotty.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)
- Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Save And Share :
104 comments:
Finished it without cheating, even though the STAB/BTS cross was a lucky guess (a stab, you might say..."stab" didn't seem right for "skewer")).
I knew Caleb Bradham because one of my biographical subjects was Thomas Elmezzi, head chemist for Pepsi in the mid-20th century. Bradham took advantage of anti-Coca-Cola sentiment in the 1890s, based on a connection with the coca leaf.
Another ridiculous pop culture fest. Never heard of Anne Frank, A Raisin in the Sun, or Covid-19. When will they start making puzzles for grown-ups again??
OOHS crossing AHH is the laziest fill I think I've ever seen.
Never heard of Anne Frank?!?!?!? Please at least read the Wikipedia page on her. It’s important that we never forget.
Sorry, Anonymous, but where have you been for the last 70 years that you haven’t heard of Anne Frank? And a RAISININTHESUN is an extremely well-known play.
It’s a troll. He said he never heard of Covid-19. Come on. Learn to ignore obvious nonsense.
I found this to be very easy. Things I didn’t know, like CALEB, inventer of Pepsi (!?), and the NUMBER part of NUMBERTHESTARS, which I couldn’t quite remember, came easily with crosses. The revealer was a little hard to come up with because I was thinking of an actual message from a pilot to the passengers, “expecting some turbulence” (I hate hearing this one) or “we’ll be landing in 30 minutes”
Actually, my favorite clue from this puzzle was the “Message from a pilot” part of the revealer. That was a terrific misdirect, as I kept thinking of things pilots say over the intercom during flights.
Then there was that quartet of words I love – LOOFA, ERUDITE, GLUT, LATEN – which beautified the outing.
My brain’s workout ethic was satisfied by trying to figure out the revealer before filling in a single letter, not to mention a number of no-knows.
All this was bolstered by TILs, due to some post-solve exploring:
• OLLA. It’s pronounced OY-yah, and is a clay cooking pot with a rounded belly, wide mouth, and often a tapered neck, for cooking stews and more.
• HAYDN’s Surprise Symphony. Oh, I knew that during a quiet movement the orchestra suddenly blasts a thunderous chord, but why? One story is that while Haydn’s was conducting the piece’s premiere, he heard someone in the audience snoring, and decided to do something about it. Hah!
Thus, much loveliness wrested from the box today, making for a scintillating solve. Thank you, Jared!
First encountered the utterly repulsive, inherently offensive and childishly glib slang term RONA in the NYTimes Crossword a few months back, and hoped I would never encounter is again.
Hope may spring eternal, but so, apparently, do callous, clueless and insufferable boors. And so my hopes have been dashed once again.
or the cleverest.
No mention of the marine animal mini-theme midway through the puzzle?
I actually thought this could be part of the NYT’s move to diversify its constructors by publishing one written by a MAGA believer, for the reasons Rex mentions up top. (Sorry, Jared, if you’re not - and I know many of the clues are actually written by the eds. Maybe your clue for TULSI was “Ironic holder of the title Director of National Intelligence.”)
I only knew two and a half of the four themers as books, so the theme didn't work for me. The 'half' is NEW MOON, for which I'm pretty sure the actual title is The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Also, RAISIN IN THE SUN looks terrible without the ‘A’. SKYWRITING is a book by Jane Pauley, so could have been a fifth themer.
One of my puzzle NONOs is cluing ordinary words as PPP, especially when your theme is PPP. See, for example, SWEET. You have an absolute ton of PPP between your theme and stuff it’s hard to clue any other way (e.g. RENEE, KIA, ELWES, HAYDN, ILSA, CALEB, UBER-X, ETSY, TULSI, BTS, ISUZU). Don’t go there for SWEET.
The HHS director's rhetoric notwithstanding, the CDC still does explicitly recommend vaccinations.
Well, obviously this one was not intended for me - no motivation here to tick off probably a couple of dozen crosses to parse together PPP I’ve never heard of - nope, hard pass.
If you put me and fictional novels in a Venn diagram, you would need a microscope to see where we overlap. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I actually read a work of fiction - maybe about 10 years ago ?
So, totally a wheelhouse thing and this one definitely wasn’t in mine today.
Easy-Medium. I'm more aligned with Team @Lewis than Team @Rex today.
Overwrites:
Spit before STAB for the skewer at 6A
UNPin (as in removing a clothes pin) before UNPEG(?) at 28A
WOEs:
CALEB the Pepsi guy at 1A
The Hozier hit at 29D (and for that matter, Hozier himself)
https://crosswordfiend.com/2021/12/15/thursday-december-16-2021/#un - Same theme, same revealer, and A RAISIN IN THE SUN with the A is a themer. THE SUN ALSO RISES is a 15 too.
I’m with @H.Gunn. Except for the earlier NYT reference, have never seen nor heard the term RONA applied to Covid. Must be a regionalism or some other ism. Otherwise a doable puzzle despite all the PPP. Only real hangup was not knowing the final B in CALEB, so had a hard time parsing BYDESIGN.
OK, I do the puzzle in the morning to put off the day’s distressing headlines. (I haven’t seen them yet but I know they’ll be distressing.) When a puzzle throws so much ugliness in my face—all the stuff Rex objects to—I can only hope for an entertaining post from OFL, and thankfully today we have that. Takes some of the bad taste out of my mouth.
Hand up for have no knowledge or recollection of a movie called “The Cat’s Meow.” The trailer shows it has a wonderful cast and was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, so I can only guess that the script must be a real stinker. Probably a fun watch anyway.
But for the record: I HATED today’s puzzle.
Finished this in half my normal Wednesday time, so didn’t have time to be put off by anything. Liked the theme.
I also hated having to write TULSI. But as I continued to solve, in the back of my mind I thought "she probably wishes the clue was 'Director of National Intelligence Gabbard' and not just another politician...which she is...and it's what she does, instead of doing her actual JayOhBee."
Hey All !
Welp, I happened to like it. Even as I got *yet another* rejection email yesterday for a puz I submitted, which I must say, was a good one. Man, I don't get what they want.
Puzs are words/phrases crossing. Certain words/phrases apparently set off certain people. I'm sure the constructor does not set out to insult the solver. It's just words that fit/people that exist, whether you think them dicks or heros. Beside, the NYT could reject it, but apparently found it apropos to publish. My two cents.
As a published author, whose book I also think is good (because I wrote it! 😁), I liked this Theme. My isn't sky related, but that's OK. Nice for Jared to get symmetrical books in.
SEA OTTERs have been quite popular lately. Gonna give a few points to @pablo for that to catch up a bit!
I will SEE my BIG MESS out now.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Come on. It’s clearly intended as a joke.
Hey Rex (and others with this problem): "Ingrid" and "Ilsa" both start with an I. That's how I remember it.
Agree. What ever happened to Rona Jaffe (maybe a little obscure but better than this awful slang used nowhere but the NYT crossword)?
I know you're joking, but there was once a commenter who had never heard of SPF before, so...
Surprise Symphony was in a Thrice clue earlier this week. Hooray for coincidence!
Thank you for calling out all the ways this puzzle can really ruin a nice morning cup of coffee and bowl of cereal. Love your views, as I share them. The only things I liked about this was the Cloud Atlas reference because that is one fantastic book, and the Raisin in the Sun reference because, again, fantastic pla and, fortunately, both are themed in the opposition to the current administration. So it kind of made up for the rest? Idk, not really but two favorites of mine for sure.
I’d rather see Cary Elwes than pointless baseball stuff any day of the week. At least he is actually entertaining.
But yeah, overall not a very good or interesting puzzle. Hated seeing fascist supporters like Gabbard. Just gross.
I'm trying to articulate why this cheeky reference to Anne Frank bothered me, but David Yazbeck and Erik Della Penna's in Dead Outlaw did not ("Your mama's dead / Your daddy's dead / Your brother's dead / And so are you... / Tupac is dead / Balzac is dead / Anne Frank is dead / And so are you, and so are you". Maybe it's because the Dead Outlaw opening number was deliberately using the taboo nature of what they were saying to establish the tone of a show that was going to treat the subject of death cavalierly throughout, while the puzzle clue seemed just... clueless. Thoughts?
found this one to be rather easy. not a personal best but well under my wednesday average. did have to look up hadyn and elwes for the correct spellings.
I don't look for political things to annoy me in puzzles so I thought this one was fine. It also played very easy for me, well below my Wednesday average. I was hoping for and got a comment about oohs crossing ahh. That was just awful.
So, so tired of seeing ETSY in virtually every puzzle. Who else?
All the theme answers were at the end but 17A was at the beginning. Threw me off because I had ATLAS early. I was thinking the pilot saw an ICBM until i eventually figured out CLOUD.
Ilsa and Ingrid both start with I. Does that help, Rex?
Thank you Rex for your comments regarding RFK Jr and his mindless reshaping of the CDC, followed by the Tulsi Gabbard reference and the reappearance of “Rona” in the puzzle. This definitely had sour notes for me especially on the heels of the horrendous shooting at the CDC. Maybe the puzzle, overall well-crafted, was written before all of these events occurred and was just published now. I doubt the constructor, using a reference to “Number the Stars” had any ill intent but the timing was off.
Saw the clue for CALEB and thought "oh oh" but he was easy enough with crosses, thank goodness. I have read good things about CLOUDATLAS and intend to read it but it seems like it would need some close attention, so maybe this winter. Didn't know about NEWMOON or NUMBERTHESTARS but the theme connections were obvious so no real trouble there.
Hello Hozier. Sounds like a fancy way to call someone a "hoser" one of my favorite Canadianisms. And hello too to old friend OLLA. How have you been? Also I'm guessing that LATEN has not been around since Wordsworth.
Good call on SEAOTTER @Roo. Can never have too many otters.
OK Wednesday, JC, but, Jeezum Crow there were some real moo-cows in here. Don't know about M&A, but my pick is DEC. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
Baseball is important on many levels. I have sympathy for those who do not understand.
I was surprised to see RP use the word Challenging since my first thought was, another Wednesday without much resistance. While it was a very interesting theme, at times it felt like slogging thru a pool of trivia. I’m no constructor but with four proper names as the foundation, I don’t understand packing so many others into the grid. And as a solver, it’s something I usually just find frustrating.
Still trying to figure out why it’s OOH but not AAH. Like Rex, I gagged at the sight of 7D, cringed at the cutesy clue for DIARY, and absolutely loathed the deplorable RONA. Of course the CDC clue may trigger some unpleasant reactions as well but it was likely an innocent enough thought at the time.
Thank you Rex for pointing out the horrific use of RONA in this puzzle. It is extremely disrespectful to the millions of people like myself who lost loved ones from Covid. Can we PLEASE go back to “Gossip columnist Barrett” or “Novelist Jaffe”?
That Anne Frank pun was truly off-putting. I don’t remember the last time I was so disturbed by a puzzle clue.
Is this the worst puzzle I've ever done? Probably not, but I can't think of a worse one off the top of my head. All (mostly unknown to me) names and titles all the time. The good news is that they were fairly crossed -- but what they were crossed with was really dull fill.
What about the theme? The theme makes no sense. Maybe a CLOUD ATLAS could be thought of as SKYWRITING if you really stretch credulity, but nothing else.
If I were the editor of the NYTXW, this puzzle never would have seen the light of day.
Robyn’s beginner-friendly offering in today’s New Yorker has a couple of nice grid-spanning downs, and she was able to tuck in a couple of good clues as well. It would be well-received here on a Monday, or maybe even an easy Tuesday. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll stop by on Friday this week.
I musta still had yesterday's puzzle on my mind when I threw down RAISINbranINTHESUN.
I'll add to @Rex's list of wretched puzzle appearances by noting the cross of UBERX with SEX after the NYT article the other day (maybe even yesterday?) about the large number of sexual assaults by Uber drivers on lone female passengers.
OTOH, they did toss in DEMOS as a possible sop to those of us gnashing our teeth over TULSI et al.
I'm not too much in sympathy with those who let a distasteful crossword reference ruin their day, but this one was a bit hard to stomach. But otherwise, well done, Jared Cappel.
It's a clever theme and had some interesting fill, like AMAZE for "Floor," especially since that came right after "Floor models." "Workers who sometimes carry flashlights" (USHERS) was also good. As we''ve said before, though, nobody ever really calls Covid RONA. And I had no idea about the fantasy novel or Hozier, whoever or whatever that is. I like seeing good words like GLUT and ERUDITE in a puzzle. But one person who is not erudite is Tulsi Gabbard, and, honestly, coming upon mention of her pretty much ruined the puzzle for me. If I were the constructor or editor I'd have found some way not to give her a nod by putting her in the NYTCWP.
Genuinely love The Cat's Meow -- some under-appreciated performances, and any movie about old Hollywood scandals my cup of tea.
As for the puzzle, it was nearly my fastest Wednesday (helps that I'm a Hozier fan, I guess?). Though I had the same reaction to the CDC (which, to be fair, isn't the constructor's fault, given the timing), and the Anne Frank/Coronavirus clues (which were).
CLOUD ATLAS clue is for the book, IMHO far superior to the unwatchable movie.
Well under my normal time despite stumbling in the SE: I had NOSeRIng before NOSTRILS and couldn't suss the Pilot message.
I have no problem with clues about people, places, and things we don't like, nor with clues focussing on the metro area.
Me too!
I found this puzzle to be quite easy, and I didnt have any of the solving issues Rex had at all. (I can also never get enough Cary Elwes in my life, and "The Cat's Meow" is a surprisingly good film). I'm not a reader at all, but I grasped the theme pretty quickly, and I'm not a pop music fan, but seven question marks for a song that was #1 just last year is absurd.
I do, however, completely agree about the off-putting nature of the puzzles. Didn't struggle with it but DEFINITELY didn't enjoy it (outside of ELWES).
I didn't really like the puzzle either, but to me the theme was fun and obvious: All the titles of written works contained things found in the sky—CLOUD, SUN, MOON, STARS—hence, SKY WRITING. Simple as that.
For me, Wednesday is a warm-up for the Thursday, Friday, Saturday run. It’s the day I stop attacking the grid downs-only and start crosswording as it was meant to be done, damn it all. So why was this so much easier than yesterday’s? Why was this mostly read-clue-fill-in-square routine?
There were some good clues. “Collector’s item” for IOU at 58D was very nice, as was “Beach blanket” for SAND at 29A, but 10D was a BIGMESS of green paint.
And, yes, OTTERs, of the SEA or river variety, are superficially adorable* but joining them with SEALs and VETS across the centre was, to me, death by a thousand cutes. You’ve gotta rein that in a bit. You might also want to rethink the idea of using 2 themes: books referencing sky-related things and books in a library. Or am I missing something here?
I’ve never seen The Princess Bride so I really have no clue who Cary ELWES is, except that he (maybe she) is a convenient crossword answer and, therefore, a possible buddy of Esai Morales.
*They are wild animals and can be quite unpredictable and vicious.
Nice one re TULSI.
I put DIARY down from its crosses without thinking much about the clue. I took Frank to mean honest.
We call them clothespins but I just read that they're called pegs in the UK. Hence, UNPEG at 28A.
Crosswords don't put me off. Discovering this morning that the wonderful croissants I bought recently have gotten stale. That was a tragedy.
Four theme answers plus two revealers, vs. 4 'playful marine mammal' answers. The theme does win, but it's close.
But the revealer (the real one, SKYWRITING) doesn't really land. The four works have sky-related words in their titles, but they are not writing about the sky--at least, A RAISIN IN THE SUN isn't.
The pun at 4-A is cute, but I'm not entirely comfortable with puns about a girl who was gassed by the Nazis. Just me, maybe.
Sex sells is an aphorism, not at axiom, but close enough. At least it's not a KIA model name.
Well, I guess I'm feeling grouchy. I did enjoy working out the theme answers; the Hansberry play was the only one I knew. And I learned who "invented" Pepsi!
On the easy side for me too, which is odd because I only knew the CLOUD and SUN themers. I also did not know CALEB and SWEET.
Having no costly erasures was helpful.
I thought the theme was cute and I liked it more than @Rex did, but I can appreciate his rant.
A lot of stuff here not to like - RONA, TULSI, the inclusion of CDC, FRANK ACCOUNT=DIARY,
OOHS/AAHS. Like I've said, I don't analyze them, I just do them but this was a bit of a turn-off. Only good thing about it was I solved as a themeless & didn't have to search for my daily typo :)
I hope you will find this comment friendly and helpful rather than insulting, @Roo, but I've been biting my tongue for years while I've read your laments on having all your puzzles rejected by the NYT. I offer you a possible solution in 13 letters:
COLLABORATION.
Remember that this suggestion comes from a constructor who only collaborates. In my case, this is because I couldn't create a grid if my life depended on it -- and therefore I couldn't go it alone, even if I wanted to.
But I like collaborating, Roo. It's another brain and another pair of eyes -- and if you have the right collaborator, it can only make your puzzle better. If there's a weakness, a flaw, an experienced collaborator will probably see it. Maybe the theme idea needs to be jettisoned and maybe it just needs to be tweaked. In your case, since you do all of a puzzle -- the theme, the grid, and the clues -- you probably have no idea why your puzzle is being rejected. A good collaborator will be able to pinpoint what the weakness is ahead of time.
Always remember that half a loaf is better than none. Better a co-constructed puzzle IN the NYT than a solo puzzle NOT in the NYT. If you see what I mean.
There are a lot of puzzle pros out there who seem to enjoy doing collaborations. I really urge you to reach out to one or more of them.
Anne Frank comment, RONA, etc. - pretty bad to put it nicely. I'm surprised it was accepted.
Used by, among others, Donald Trump Jr. in an Instagram message in 2020 while the country was still trying to get control over the virus and shortly after the White House Amy Coney Barrett superspreader event: "Apparently I got the 'rona," he wrote.
Is there really anything more we need know about this scurrilous term and those who use it?
But wouldn't you agree that that would make it no longer a "surprise?' ;)
🤞🤞
Toast them and they'll be fine! Add butter and strawberry jam....
Princess Bride is one of those movies that you would never ever EVER think you would want to see, that you'd run the other way from anytime there was even the smallest suggestion of seeing it, and that you ended relationships over with people who talked about it, but that after you saw it kicked yourself and berated yourself and felt yourself an idiot for not having seen it sooner.
I'm going to put "CLOUD ATLAS" on my library request list. I never watched the movie, though I did read the reviews. I usually prefer the book over the movie so I'll read the book first.
@Lewis' anecdote about Haydn made me chuckle. I was in a band that recorded a few CDs. In one recording session, the drummer hit a note on an electric piano while its memory was being recorded by our studio producer. That note, a very loud "bonk", came out on the recording, and we decided to leave it in, just because. It makes me laugh every time I hear it.
Thanks, Jared Cappel!
I completely agree with your sentiment, but want to point out Anne Frank died of typhus.
The point of baseball IS baseball. It is sufficient.
I'm intrigued by Wanderlust's suggestion that maybe the NYTXW is trying to strike a balance in part by including known conspiracy theorist and MAGA booster TULSI as an answer, and also the insensitively "cutesy" RONA. I imagine it being used like so:
"Dude, 'sup? Where you been?" "Aw dude, like, I got the RONA a couple weeks ago, and ma dukes said I couldn't go out." "That blows, man. Shoulda come out to see the concert anyways." "I know, right? I don't see what the big deal is. It was like a cold. I mean, like, **** that Fauci and the CDC or whatever it is."
And yeah, probably shouldn't be flippant cluing Anne Frank's DIARY. Incorrectly titling Hansberry's play is also disrespectful.
You can do a lot better, NYTXW.
Tulsi is an herb, also known as holy basil, and used as a tea.
Hard to imagine a harder cultural vibe pivot than we've had in the last 24 hours. I adapted Rex's Tuesday comments:
Another thing that makes this puzzle remarkable is how much it foregrounds white men and MAGA-heads. Again, there's nothing particularly showy with how the puzzle does this, but yeah, four white men and/or MAGA-heads (CALEB, HAYDN, ELWES, TULSI) -- and more if you count those in the clues (David Mitchell) or inferred by other entries (CDC, RONA, BIGMESS). And precisely one Black woman (Lorraine Hansbury). Historically, the visibility of white people generally, and white men specifically, has been an issue that many solvers have called attention to and that (fairly recently -- i.e., yesterday) some constructors have tried to address. This puzzle quietly returns white men to the kind of puzzle prominence that is absolutely routine for white people (men in particular) -- and adds MAGA vibes as well. I say "quietly" because it does nothing to the overall solvability of this puzzle. HAYDN and CALEB are each a bit of a throwback, so if any proper noun gives trouble today (beyond ELWES), it's probably those, but the rest are right over the plate. TULSI Gabbard may not be as well known to solvers as yesterday's ANITA HILL and HARRIET Tubman, but she's in the news a lot (usually doing something stupid), so if you don't know her, you should.
😊
@Les, I spent 3 days with my daughter and son in law on an island in Prince William Sound and there were tons of sea otters. I kinda decided that, while they were interesting, they were not adorable, nor did they seem playful, like river otters, since they mostly just paddle around on their backs. Oh. And they “hold hands to sleep” So I guess what I’m sayin’ is…I raised an eyebrow at that that “playful” clue!
This one was easier for me than Wednesday usually is and I really enjoyed the theme (also I liked the sea animals in the middle). I can understand Rex’s discomfort with the clues he mentioned but honestly I’m just trying to solve the puzzle for fun.
For anyone who hasn’t read it, Number the Stars is a wonderful book that adults would also enjoy. It’s worth a read.
Excellent advice Nancy.
I wonder if the clue for DIARY would have been acceptable without the question mark? I admit I didn’t take it as cutesy while working the puzzle but upon seeing the comments I can see how it would be seen that way.
I knew there would be some negative comments about the puzzle, but I confess, I didn’t realize there would be quite so many of them. I realize that the voiced opinions of the big person over the CDC may have led to a tragedy. However, I believe (know) there are still dedicated scientists/physicians/researchers that are employed there. Having worked for state government, my “in the trenches non-partisan hired” colleagues had to adjust back and forth ALL the time (even pre-Trump times). Try to stick it out, keep up the work based on the facts, etc. Yes. Things are bad now (ULTRA partisan). But, I just cannot let myself get upset by CDC being in the puzzle today over any other federal agency.
I too share your Venn diagram, even my book club is non-fiction only. Plus this puzzle was laden with PPP which I rarely know, except Renee. None-the-less the crosses were fair and I finished while my coffee was still hot. A fun morning interlude.
Thank you!
Double revealer fare! The puztheme had mostly no-know book titles, at the M&A Library ... soooo ... definitely a feisty solvequest.
staff weeject pick: AHH -- Har-larious crosser for OOHS.
some fave stuff: BIGMESS. ERUDITE. Playful marine mammals mini-theme.
UNPEG? har
Thanx for the book clubbin, Mr. Cappel dude. Had some fUn moments.
Masked & Anonymo10Us
... and now, get thee to a punnery ...
"Edible Runtpuz Punnery" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I think for me it has something to do with the source. You expect someone published in the NYT to show the respect to its subject (Frank) that that paper would show under any other circumstance, especially when there are so many alternate cluing approaches available.
Oh, and Rona is a great word. It’s a way to whistle pass the graveyard. Black humor is not for everyone, but I always liked “The old man’s friend” for pneumonia.
Thank you, Anonymous 8:00 AM. Maybe, just maybe, I won’t make that mistake anymore!
Thanks for the reminder to go over to the NYer site. I get the print magazine and do that puzzle weekly but I sometimes forget to go online and do the other days. Robyn's puzzle was cute and fresh, as always, with, I think, only one celebrit name! Now I'm going to check out Patrick Barry's, from yesterday....
I actually read The Princess Bride long before the movie came out and thought it was hilarious. It was written by William Goldman, who is also famous for Marathon Man and All The President's Men, but best know (says me) for writing the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, for which he won an Oscar.
It is just really time to get rid of Will S. Out of touch and mailing it in. Gah. I’m so sick of him.
In fact, this WAS a friggin' PPP-fest, even if some of the names (e.g., ANNE FRANK, RAISIN IN THE SUN) were well-known. (I'll also give HAYDN, BTS, AND ETSY a pass, although I'm betting a lot of folks were Natick'd by at least one of those, as well.) But ELWES?! UBERX?! CALEB?! "Top Chef" (in the clue) ?! Bleedin' proper nouns everywhere you turn, often crossing one another. Totally ruined the solve for me.
@ Kitshef 7:19 Your final comment. - Exactly what I was thinking.
How Rex could go from that clue to the rant he did is beyond me. I would think, if anything, he wold praise the puzzle for reminding us all of what the CDC does , and is meant to do.
I'm confused by later rants in the comments about the Anne Frank clue. Whaat is ad about clung "diary" as "Frank account"?
That's whaat it's known for: her account of their time in hiding. I thought it a clever misdirect.
I also thought 58D was clever, tho I groaned a bit over that one - seemed a bit bad punny
@JT
I agree re Skywriting
I actually agree, but then Edward Gorey, Charles Rodriguez, and Gahan Wilson are some of my favorite cartoonists, I thought the late Carol Wayne's description of Miami as "God's Little Waiting Room" on Johnny Carson's show was one of the funniest ad libs I'd ever heard, and I actually enjoyed the National Lampoon's notorious "Death" issue, so I guess there's no hope for me.
As for the CDC reference -- am I mistaken, or was this puzzle already set and ready to go by Friday, when the shooting occurred? Either way, if we're going to start not allowing any places where shootings/killings occurred to be mentioned, pretty soon our puzzles will have no references to any locations at all. Just over the last few weeks we've had Walmart, the NFL offices, a Target store, and the CDC. What's left?
I’m totally sick of ETSY too.
For Beezer: You're correct that the two major parties hate each other. But for the first time in anyone's memory, Democrats and Republicans, ADDED TOGETHER, represent a minority of the voting public. A binary analysis should not be between Dem. and Rep. It should be between partisanship and nonpartisanship. Changing parties accomplishes nothing, because they both serve their own partisan interests ahead of the commonweal.
Me
Thanks, @Nancy. I really wanted to get one in solo. I'll look into that.
Roo
wow I had not seen the cdc news until after doing the puzzle what a gut punch can't help wondering if puzzle was already scheduled and it was too late to pull it from publication?
Erik Agard is a co-founder of the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory, a resource for aspiring puzzle-makers from underrepresented groups.
@kitshef You're being a little tone deaf, I'm afraid. That the direct cause of death was typhus is beside the point. She died in a Nazi concentration camp where they gassed millions of Jews. She didn't deserve to have a jokey clue written about her.
UBER is now another of those "taboo locations," apparently -- evil things have happened in Ubers, so now we must excise that reference as well (or at least not include it in a puzzle where the word "sex" also appears). Since people do bad and evil things almost everywhere, is there ANY place, location, business, or physical site that we can refer to anymore?
Oh, a joke, of course. I tend to take things at face value, should learn to be more discerning.
I've followed Rex's blog for gosh decades. I'm feeling he is fed up with nyt (not just crossword). And frankly I am too.
Thanks Rex. I think your comments were spot on.
"But for the first time in anyone's memory, Democrats and Republicans, ADDED TOGETHER, represent a minority of the voting public."—Can you explain this statement, please?
Time for another sighting of a onetime-frequent poster (how’s that for an oxymoron?). Most days I still read and love OFL’s and y’alls thoughts. I just either am short of time or don’t have anything I consider particularly blog-worthy - not to insinuate this post will be.
I agree this was a tad easy for a Wednesday, but otherwise fine. I thought some posters came down unnecessarily heavy on the DIARY entry, so to speak. I tried to come up with a frankfurter/hot dog way to interpret that, so when I saw the DIARY of Anne Frank was our “Frank account?” I was relieved, and grateful to be reminded of that brave family. I didn’t see any cuteness in the pun - perhaps the ? should have been left off. (Hi @Beezer- just saw you said the same.) Then the last themer tied into that bravery-in-the-face-of-evil idea. Same for CDC - though the puzzle was probably approved long before the black-sheep Kennedy’s appointment and certainly before the attack of the misguided (literally) and disturbed shooter, I see it as a shout out to the bravery and integrity of the CDC workers. My brother, who lives there and used to do a lot of work with the CDC, told me there’s a weekly rally of support outside the offices. He’s working on a new sign for the next one.
I did agree that the inclusion of the politician was off-putting, but I amused myself by turning her upside down to reveal I, SLUT, which fit well with SLUR and GLUT. I also found two decent ways to rework that section. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, editors!
What else? AHH, AHH crossing OOHS. I say if you’re going to do it, go big or go home. No trying to sneak them into opposite corners. I also liked BUDS crossing BESTIE, and SAP crossing the backwards SNAP.
Well off TODO NONOS,
Mimi
PS. @ROO, sorry about the rejection. Maybe take @Nancy’s advice and get a collaborator - she and @Lewis could surely recommend a few. And anytime you want some EARS, I’d be happy to give some feedback!
PPS. @Lewis, the story we were told in music school was that Haydn planned the “surprise” loud unison in advance, specifically to wake up his royal sponsor who was renowned for sleeping during performances.
Bob Mills.
Skewer is also a verb. So the clue works
Interesting about Pepsi.
I did read that Coke had that 6 oz.
bottle but Pepsi introduced the 12 oz. bottle which became the standard.
H. Gunn
I understand your being upset by the slang RONA But……..
The last time the word came up people here associated it with MAGA in general and specifically with one of the Trump sons. However , people shorten words all the time. That’s how language works. And with Covid 19. I am sure most people who used it were not using it politically. There is nothing inherently trivializing about RONA any more than the word flu which is of course a shortening of influenza which killed tens of millions of people around the world.around 1918. My guess is RONA will not last as slang ; it sounds stale and rarely used now to my ears. But repulsive? No.
We have a wannabe dictator in the White House so we have a lot more things to worry about than policing language.
Second try before moving on...
Tu punto también.
Wow, is there ever a lot of gunk crossing other gunk. However, crossing AAH with OOHS is world-class marine mammal in-yo-face-ness and all is forgiven.
They're banning SLURS in Scrabble? They're still allowed in guitar. Maybe play that instead. 😉 I just added ERUDITE onto my favorite word list between CAULDRON and ANALOG.
🤣 BIG MESS.
😩 LATEN. RONA.
I need to warn you you're about to see my gunkometer down below, but a member of our beloved Anonymoti derided it's existence yesterday as "made-up." Since everything by humans is made-up, I'm not sure if we're talking about a particularly grievous making-up here, or if we're lording our make-upery in a made-uppish way, but as always, I'll remind you the gunkometer is peer reviewed in double-blind studies and RFK, Jr. gives it two thumbs way up.
People: 7
Places: 2
Products: 11 {back 'er down big fellah}
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 76 (37%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: It sells, in an axiom ... and in a bordello ... and apparently in the NYTXW selection committee.
Uniclues:
1 The first 10 minutes of every home makeover show when they bring in the sledgehammers.
2 Sound of a friend with benefits.
3 Comment you might hear at the movies in Hell (or Heaven I suppose).
4 Homophonic warning your former girlfriend is headed your way?
5 Crafters claim ghosts are made-up.
6 Those books on the shelf behind you in Zoom meetings you haven't read but make you seem smart.
7 What our slush pile editor looks for in a grid.
8 What Godzilla accidentally did at lunch.
9 What a Netipot fanatic says when the stream finally works its magic.
1 DEMOS AMAZE
2 BESTIE OOHS
3 I SEE USHERS
4 UBER X ALERT
5 ETSY PANS SOULS
6 ERUDITE LIBRARY
7 SEX BY DESIGN (~)
8 SAT ON SWEET KIA
9 AHH NOSTRILS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: "See all this blood everywhere? Well, let's thank this Ronco product and my inattentiveness." AIRHEAD PEELER REVIEW.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As I said above, influenza killed tens of millions of people but was shortened to flu. Putting aside the political overlay, objectively how is RONA from carona virus any different? The scenario presented implies that rona was only used politically. I doubt that.very much.
We have much more serious things to worry about now than whether Rona is disrespectful.
I do confess I didn’t understand the Frank clue.( Got it from crosses. )
So I guess I wasn’t expecting a a misdirection clue for such a serious subject.
Tulsi was a Democrat who became an opportunistic MAGA Republican Party hack. So she wasn’t a highlight but she exists. As a cancer sufferer, I am worried as anyone about the unfunding of the CDC but criticizing its appearance in the puzzle will do me no good.
Otherwise I thought it was an okay easy puzzle except the NW.
When this started out with a person I’d never heard of, I was actually hoping for a great Wednesday puzzle with some great tougher clues. Alas, got neither. In fact, I made notes to see how many of my thought mirrored OFL’s. Almost every one is the answer. The oddest part of the puzzle’s challenging metrics seemed to be that it was either Monday-easy, or for me darn near impossible. I truly wish I had recorded the last time I flat out guessed to complete more answers. @Rex catalogued all the things I disliked, so that’s that.
What I really enjoyed (including the clues) were: BY DESIGN, NOSTRILS, LIBRARY (my first graduate degree was MLIS w/ law library emphasis), and my favorite because it sums this one up to a T - BIG MESS.
Quizás mañana brille y desafíe.
@Sir Hillary 11:32 AM
This is why humor was invented.
Post a Comment