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Early PC game whose nonsense working title stuck / THU 8-21-25 / Destroyer of Hindu cosmogony / Swiss-born artist whose name sounds like an art medium / Old wide-screen format / Big name in Russian ballet / Deity with the raven familiars Huginn and Muninn / Start of a popular saying about gravity
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Constructor: Simeon Seigel
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
Up then down. Not TAKEI, but TAKE IT IN—once you hit the "I" in TIN, head up to the "T," and then come all the way back down through the "IN":
- BITTER-ENDER (BITTE x/w RENDER) (17A: *Person who persists in a hopeless cause)
- GAME RESERVES (GAMER x/w SERVES) (19A: *Wildlife parks)
- TAKE IT IN (TAKEI x/w TIN) (26A: *Enjoy the moment, say)
- LIVE RADAR (LIVER x/w DAR) (55A: *Storm-tracking aid)
- TONY AWARD (TONYA x/w WARD) (61A: *Musical appreciation?)
- ORGANIZING (ORGAN x/w ZING) (66A: *Forming a union)
Kelleys Island is both a village in Erie County, Ohio, and the island which it fully occupies in Lake Erie. The island has a total area of 4.41 square miles (11.42 km2) and was formed by glacial action on limestone and dolomite.
As of the 2020 census it has a year-round population of under 300 and is primarily a vacation destination with a large seasonal influx of visitors and workers. (wikipedia)
• • •
 |
| [follow the arrow, right, then up, then down] |
The concept is much easier to grasp than it is to explain (concisely) in words. f was the first themer I "got," only I didn't fully get it, as I thought the answer simply turned down—that is, I thought the full answer was TAKE IN. I had to get BITTER-ENDER to understand that there was an up and a down component (so, not TAKE IN, but TAKE IT IN). Going up and down is certainly more impressive than simply going down. And the architecture of the theme kept revealing more layers of impressiveness as I continued solving. The theme doesn't just work, it works without a lick of nonsense in the grid. That is, the grid looks completely normal—all the Acrosses and all the Downs are plausible answers. It's only the starred clues that reveal the hidden bounciness and overlappingness of the underlying theme. Further, all the themers are symmetrical (an ordinary feature of a themed puzzle, but given the demands of this themed puzzle, a harder-than-usual thing to pull off, I assume). I love (truly) the fact that the revealer is only the first half of the familiar phrase (WHAT GOES UP ...), allowing me to infer the second part and thus not crowding the grid with unnecessary elements (never mind that getting MUST COME DOWN into this grid, as a whole answer or in parts, would likely have been impossible). So I'm duly impressed. I can't say I *loved* the actual experience of solving it—it was fussy, and some of the fill made me grimace a bit—but as "architectural feat" puzzles go, this one rates pretty high.
Things got a little ugly (and slow) for me right about ... I have an almost continuous squiggly line drawn from TOUCH (36D: Graze), through HE/SHE (53A: Lead-in to "they") and ZORK (57A: Early PC game whose nonsense working title stuck), down ZING to TSENG. (69A: Yani ___, youngest pro golfer to win five major championships (age 22)). All those answers, to varying degrees, fought me. Could not get the idea of a grazing animal out of my head for 36D: Graze (TOUCH). To me, "graze" is to "barely TOUCH" or "lightly TOUCH." Really needs a modifier. That's my excuse for not seeing TOUCH. No idea why you'd be saying "HE/SHE/They" all at once like that. Nobody's pronouns are HE/SHE/They, and since that's not a complete list of possible pronouns ... I don't understand the context for the list. Are people really using HE/SHE/They the way they used to use HE/SHE, as one catchall pronoun? Anyway, clearly whatever logic was going on there eluded me. As for ZORK and TSENG, that's just me not knowing anything (or knowing very little) about "Early PC games" (I wrote in PONG!) or women's (or men's, or children's, or anyone's) golf. I can't believe someone with a first name like YANI got into the NYTXW for the first time with her last name (TSENG). YANI is like "hey ... I'm right here ... four letters, ending in "I" ... Come on ... put me in, coach!"
Beyond ZORKTSENG (which will be the title of my future memoir), everything was pretty familiar to me. No real struggles, beyond the usual Thursday struggle to see through some of the Thursday cluing. The fill wasn't exactly thrilling today, but it didn't really have to be, given how much chaos was going on with the theme. I did like SEAWEED WRAP and CINERAMA. I did not like the two verb phrases ending in "ON" (READS ON, WAVED ON). That particular phrasing repetition made me wince. Repeating the word "ON" in the grid is no big deal, but repeating the placement of it in a verb phrase, that made the dupe too obvious. WAVED ON bugged me in a way that ON FIRE would not have. I might've noticed the repetition of "ON," but I wouldn't have felt it in my bones the way I did with WAVED ON. All the unpleasantness of hitting a pothole at full speed. But as grid ugliness goes, it's admittedly minor. Everything else seems OK.
Bullets:
- 10A: Needing more salt, perhaps (ICIER) — road (or sidewalk) salt. Because the roads (or sidewalks) are icy.
- 55A: *Storm-tracking aid (LIVE RADAR) — not so familiar with this phrase. RADAR tracks storms, all on its own. Is there dead radar? Radar on tape? I'm sure it's a valid phrase, but it felt awkward to my ears. Maybe I'm not enough of a weather junkie.
- 56A: Brew designed to survive trips to the subcontinent, in brief (IPA) — wow, OK, did not know that. My first answer here was TEA, lol. India Pale Ale. "The higher hop content acted as a natural preservative" (wikipedia), well whaddyaknow? An actual fun fact.
- 70D: Score keeper? (STAND) — as in, a music stand, which "keeps" the "score" (i.e. holds the "copy of a musical composition in written or printed notation" (merriam-webster.com)). An excellent "?" clue.
- 15A: Swiss-born artist whose name sounds like an art medium (KLEE) — I always forget his name is pronounced "Clay"!
- 2D: Fictional character with a famous opening line (ALI BABA) — clever. "Opening line" as in "magical phrase (or "line") that opens the thieves' den," i.e. open sesame. Not "opening line" as in "Call me, ISHMAEL."
- 7D: What's off to the side in a selfie (ARM) — this is sorta silly but I like it. Wait, is my arm really in my selfies? Hang on ...
 |
| [Nope, doesn't check out] |
- 22D: ___ can, item first made and patented in Britain in 1810 (TIN) — wow, that is a long way to go for TIN. Could've stopped at "can," but got all baroque with it in instead.
- 28D: Just saying? (ADAGE) — because it's "just" (as in "true"?). I had the AD and went with ... LIB (you know, when you're "just saying" whatever the **** you like, script be damned)
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd (*new*)]
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142 comments:
twenty minutes for me this morning, so medium-challenging. Had exactly the same hang-ups as OFL, had now idea who Yani was, nor had I heard of ZORK, so that whole center-to-southwest vector was like pulling teeth. But the theme was great, straightforward as to the reveal, but complicated enough to make it interesting! Especially loved BITTERENDER! And so nice the way all the answers look normal. 16 wide puzzles are always a little extra fun! Thanks, Simeon for a great puzzle ! : )
Got the trick with the ORGAN/ZING cross. But it still took a while, because I had "Can't keep up" or "Can't stay up" instead of WHATGOESUP (didn't read the clue carefully enough). My final success was READSON, which took forever because the clue suggested cleverly hinted at a change of habits or lifestyle.
I know I won't be alone in criticizing IBEENHAD. Why not simply add the word "ungrammatical" to "lament?" Is the NYT trying hard for an inner-city audience?
This was wonderful - both in the architecture and the solving.
Next Thursday: Spinning Wheel (got to go 'round)
Easy. I ignored the starred clues and got the answers from crosses. Figured out the gimmick post-solve.
Overwrites:
My 5A units were handS before they were SPANS
moveS on before READS ON for the page turner at 24D
One WOE:
Yani TSENG at 59A
Sadly (or not), I am old enough to remember ZORK (57A) and many other text-based computer games of the 70s, and CINERAMA (50A).
What @Bob Mills said about I BEEN HAD (30A)
WTF does “inner-city audience” mean???
I thought this puzzle was really fun! A perfect Thursday to sink my teeth into on this grey morning.
Agree with you that the fill was clunky in spaces, but there were some great longer answers and misdirect clues, and overall the impressive execution on the theme made it so I didn't mind the lack of "flow". It's all relative... Give me a good puzzle that was clearly made with love and care and all the necessary compromises are forgiveable!
For Anonymous: The phrase "inner-city audience" suggests people, mostly uneducated, who use ungrammatical street language in normal conversation through ignorance or laziness.
Can’t get over I BEEN HAD. I spent forever refusing to complete the fill because there was no way that could be correct.
Also, does SAY OVER mean repeat? That would be “say over again,” no? I think that would have been better clued with something to do with CB radio (e.g. finish a transmission).
I liked this one. Clever and just tricky enough, lovely Thursday puzzle.
I wanted Ishmael for 2D but KLEE seemed obvious, corroborated by OKS, so it didn’t work. The only theme answer that didn’t make sense until I read Rex’s write-up was TONY AWARD. I couldn’t auite parse it, so thought it was TONYA WARD, and just didn’t know who she was or what she had to do with music.
Yep, pOng before ZORK. Used to play it in the diner over 50 years ago.
Got the trick at GAME x SERVES. Because already had the revealer and was looking for "up"s and thinking ..."must come down"...
Amazing feat of construction that worked even without fully understanding it. And stirred memories—we had a small KLEE print that was stolen from storage during one of our many household moves, along with a gorgeous Thai temple rubbing that had become valuable because making more such rubbings had become forbidden by law. Enjoyed this one, although ZORK and TSENG were kinda obscure to say the least….
Inquiring minds want to know. Where did that question come from??
I thought your memoir would be titled OOXTEPLERNON
I found IBMS extremely gross but otherwise probably the strongest Thursday of the year so far.
To “anonymous”, relax! It’s okay. I take pride being from duh othuh side of duh bridge and consider my self bilingual in that I speak Brooklynese as well. I mean, like, “I talk good
Well, Simeon’s inventive themes can hide his constructing prowess. Note that not only are today’s gimmick answers hard to come up with, they are symmetrically placed (Hi, @Rex!), very hard to pull off. Bravo!
But grid-building skill always takes second seat to “How was the solve?”
To me, a wordplay lover, this rocked. Look at those clues for ALI BABA, EURO, MASON, ADAGE, ICIER, STAND, and TONY AWARD. (Those last four are original, BTW.)
To me, who relishes overcoming adversity, there were plenty of trip-ups to unriddle.
To me who loves to have memories re-kindled, STAND had me flashing on the incredibly heavy music stands from when I played in a middle school band.
To me, who loves beauty and fun in answer, there was SEAWEED WRAP, ZORK, HEAVE HO, EMERITI, ZING, and KEEPERS.
To me, who loves serendipities, sharing the grid was TIN and a backward TINS.
How was the solve? As usual, with your puzzles, Simeon, this was sublime. Thank you!
Got the theme very early with TAKE IT IN, but that was not much help with a lot of the theme answers. GAME RESERVES and TONY AWARDS you can get from those clues. ORGANIZING is less obvious. LIVE RADAR is green paint. And BITTER ENDER is ... nothing anyone has ever said.
Rex complains about he/she/they, which is by a conservative estimate 10,000,000 times more in-the-language than bitterender.
I did not like this one much, although it was significantly better than Simeon's last puzzle, which was one of a handful over the years where I solved but had no idea what the theme was (6/26/25). I have liked other Seigel puzzles, though.
This was a tough one, in a good way. The theme CONCEPT came quickly, but the actual answers did not. Some of the fill were proper names and trivia out of my wheelhouse, but a lot was clever cluing. I do have a problem with I BEEN HAD, which is not a phrase. It's I'VE BEEN HAD. Literally never in my life have I heard I BEEN HAD.
Um, it’s called vernacular and I didn’t take offense until your utterly pompous, arrogant and obnoxious response. My graduate degrees make me educated and eight years of residency disproves the lazy argument and yet when I go home to Brooklyn, I still like talking “good” to my friends and family. Makes me feel like less of a condescending prick.
Plenty folks like that in my small town in Vermont. And I used to live in Arkansas. Ain’t gotta go to no city, inner or outer, to hear ungrammatical talk.
I'm of that age. ZORK was a gimmie.
I had a tough time getting started up in the NW with “The Argo”, KLEE, SIVA and ALI BABA (which had a neat clue - I wish the crosses were more friendly though).
I also wish I were better at discerning themes - I could tell that the answers were partials and suspected that a LIVE Reporter might be the storm tracking aid. That’s as far as I got though. It’s definitely not as much fun when the theme remains a mystery.
I was a little disappointed that the theme referenced that Old Saw “WHAT GOES UP must come down” because the saying simply isn’t true. We have golf balls on the moon, debris on other planets and many probes that have malfunctioned and were incinerated on re-entry - obviously, that stuff isn’t coming back.
Hey All !
Never figured out how the Theme worked. Thanks Rex for cluing me in on it. Now that I know, I give kudos to Simeon for a great construction. Dang, to have to scramble words/phrases to work as intended is quite the feat.
Too bad I didn't see the truck, because while solving, I was at sea (crossword fav there), and would've been duly impressed with the puz. As it was, didn't really enjoy the solve, and took some time to finish. But a great concept even if the ole brain didn't decide to play along.
Puz is 16 wide, in case ya missed it. Revealer in center is even numbered, so that's one reason. Plus, to get your UPping and Downing a bit more space.
So a great construction, nice fill considering, but whooshed over the ole noggin here. I'll try to get the silly brain to TAKE IT IN next time a tricky puz comes my way.
Have a great Thursday!
No F's (Not getting the Theme plus no F's - I BEEN HAD!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Had to come here to have the theme explained to me, but even while solving I appreciated having real words in the themers, not gobbledegook. I’m one of those people who rarely get on the Thursday wavelength, so I just plug away before asking Uncle Rex to make sense of it for me.
Very appropriate last letter in today: the Z in ZORK.
Let's see if tomorrow keeps up the trend for me where Fridays have been solved significantly faster than Thursdays. Today was an average plus 20% so I'd say medium challenging.
I found it pretty easy and fast since 'WHATGOESUP' was pretty much a gimme. What else could a gravity related saying be? The construction is impressive and the TONYAWARD answer is spectacular. Fun solve!
My cousin owns the Kelly’s Island Coffee Company. (Just saying…) Stop by if you’re there!
GENII?????
What @Andy said. You want to hear regional vernacular? Spend a little time in the southern Midwest. Guarantee you-uns never seen anything like it.
I think that’s for the sequel.
I actually looked back at the last puzzle because I remembered it was an epic struggle for me. So I was pleasantly surprised to find a much more pleasant result today.
Very clever Thursday worthy theme - accompanied by a witty, entertaining blog from RP - both of which I enjoyed immensely. Loved the wicked clue for ICIER. Not easy for me but there wasn’t a single section that was unfairly crossed, even unfamiliar names. This was a rare UNION of impressive construction which was also a lot of fun to solve, resulting in a most satisfying Thursday. Thank you SS.
For Adam12 and Andy Freude: If you choose to speak ungrammatically with your neighbors, that's none of my business. But this isn't about your home neighborhood, it's about WORDS. Why in the name of Noah Webster should a WORD PUZZLE use words incorrectly...deliberately? Aren't we better than that?
Good one, bottom left was especially tough for me. Lots of nice misdirects.
Oof. Never heard of zork ….or Tseng or siva or sago..
Put aside before bothering with the theme
Just not for me…
@anonymous The current president frequently uses the term "inner cities" interchangeably with "black people" and "black neighborhoods" to mean the same thing, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of black people who live in US metropolitan areas live in suburbs (2020 census).
Facts are such inconvenient things, so best not to pay them any mind, it seems.
Hard to let go of stereotypes, it seems. But worth the effort; one really shouldn't be lazy or ignorant about these things, after all .
This was perhaps my least favorite NYT puzzle of all time. Exactly none of the things that worked for Rex worked for me. Bitterender?!
Another "fill in nonsense for the theme" puzzle. Hate those.
I managed to solve/finish this puppy but like @Roo, I never really grokked how it worked even though I had figured out WHATGOESUP (must come down). And no amount of Blood, Sweat &Tears or a “painted pony” was gonna help me! However, I finished, even with the big question mark and looked for the explanation. Many, many clever misdirects that added a lot of ZING (in the non-critical way) to the puzzle!
This was nifty and fun to solve.
Randomness:
-- Until @Lewis pointed it out, I didn't realize that the themers were symmetrically placed. Amazing feat of construction.
-- There are a lot of good clues today, but the one for TONYAWARD is absolutely brilliant.
-- Learned a couple of things: that SPAN can be a specific length, and (as @Rex did) the origin of IPA. Cool.
-- Gotta love the five-letter mattress brand "kealoa" where you can just drop in SE and wait for the rest to become clear. A "sertaly" perhaps?
-- COMPARISONS looks good in a grid but is kind of boring in concept, so kudos to that clue for livening it up a bit.
-- Today I bit on the "capital" misdirection and started running 4-letter cities through my head to see if any were on the Mediterranean. Rome was as close as I got.
-- Sports-obsessed, useless-knowledge dork that I am, I could have gotten Yani TSENG without any help, but I imagine that puts me in a very small minority. All the crosses seem fair though.
-- Not a fan of IBEENHAD. Agree with those who think its clue should have hinted at its non-standard grammar.
An excellent Thursday puzzle. I loved it.
He/she/they is a problem? Get with it! This is a common (these days) set of choices if one wants to include non-binary persons
Siva me Shiva
Hated it. Hated everything about it.
For once I was happy to find the revealer in the middle of the puzzle as I had things filled in that made no sense, principally the NE corner, and even turning BITTE into BITTERENDER wasn't much help (hi @ktshef, you're right). I sort of saw TAKEIN but then TAKEITIN made even more sense. Ingenious.
Hand up for the ZORK/TSENG thing. Really? SEALYS before SERTAS slowed things down but otherwise no real overwrites.
Today's fun memory was inspired by CINERAMA, which I first saw maybe seventy (!!) years ago as a kid and was blown away. Good times.
Beyond impressive construction, SS. Simply Stunning, and thanks for all the fun.
I worked at Infocom so was happy to see Zork in the puzzle. In early personal computer times - the Zork trilogy outsold Lotus 123.
I didn’t figure out the trick until organizing and Tony Award. Went back to the top and filled in my many, many blanks.
I have a friend who uses any and all pronouns! So HE/SHE/THEY seemed just fine by me.
For the selfie clue, I assumed they meant the ARM was "just out of frame" but perhaps I'm being overly generous.
Wow, I understand a tremendous effort has been underway to normalize such things, but it's still pretty remarkable to me to see people making openly racist comments like this one with no hesitation whatsoever.
How neat! Especially GAMERESERVES and TONYAWARDS. Loved it.
I saw the trick very early and I guessed the popular saying about gravity, WHAT GOES UP, immediately thereafter. I was helped by the fact that I've seen this puzzle type so often before -- most memorably in a Sunday puzzle constructed by Lewis and Jeff Chen. (Has anyone pointed this out yet? Probably.)
But that's not a criticism, Simeon. How often have I myself lamented in just the past six months "there are no new theme ideas! THERE ARE NO NEW THEME IDEAS!!!!" This may come on the heels of a rejection because the theme has been done -- never mind how differently -- and it may also come on the heels of your collaborator letting you know the same up front. So count yourself lucky, Simeon, that this was accepted anyway. It's nicely done and I found it quite enjoyable.
Yes, this theme had a bit of déjà vu for me! But Simeon came up with the idea independent of Jeff's and my puzzle. Here are his notes from WordPlay:
"This one had an unusually long delay between submission and publication: It has been more than three years since it was accepted! The delay turned out to be fortuitous, however.
"When I developed this theme, I did my usual check in online databases to make sure I wasn’t repeating theme answers from previous NYT puzzles, but I didn’t think at the time to check Sunday puzzle titles. Some months later, I came upon this very cool Lewis Rothlein/Jeff Chen Sunday grid, whose title matches the revealer for today’s puzzle. The underlying theme dynamic has similarities, but it’s interesting to see how the same idea plays out differently in the 21x21 Sunday format versus the 15x15 Thursday format.
"The good news is, it’s now five years later, so that long delay put some welcome distance between the overlapping approaches. For those of you who remember that earlier puzzle, I hope today’s version presented a fun, new challenge. For those of you who can’t believe there are people who remember or care about puzzle details from five years ago … forget I mentioned it!"
I had the same TAKE IN/TAKE IT IN epiphany as did Rex. I got the up part of the theme with GAME RESERVES. A nice piece of construction.
I stared at d_ADS ON for 24D for the longest time. Self-inflicted by putting in DVdS as the Smart TV features. I left the second letter open because the name on the check could be either the PAYEr or the PAYEE. "Turns the page, say" meant moving on from something rather than the literal READS ON. When I finally saw the correct answer, it was a true head-slapper moment. Aha.
Nice Thursday puzzle, Simeon Seigel!
@Bob, there are a lot of instances of “non-words” and incorrect grammar in this puzzle through the years, ie gonna, c’mon, ain’t. I found this little blurb from my low-level AI:
Grammar:
While grammatically incorrect (it should be "I have been had"), it's a common colloquialism. The phrase uses "had" in the sense of being "taken" or "dominated" by another person.
I think you tripped a switch with reference to “inner city.”
Lewis, I do care…I just never remember puzzle details! Now, I wonder if I struggled with yours!
One piece of my art collection is so old that to get it I had to AGREE to make KLEE the PAYEE on the check. Of course that was back when Cassius KLEE was champ. Later he converted to Islam and became an avid sailor. When people were looking for him on the windward side, pretty soon you'd hear someone shout "there's Muhammad Alee. ". And, man, that guy could make a mean dessert. His Ali Cheesecake was great and his ALIBABA au Rhum topped with open sesame seeds was to die for.
IBEENHAD is something that gets used all the time. Not sure what the fuss is about. But it also reminded me of the signs on the inside of restroom doors of food-service establishments in Oregon when I was young. They said:
WASH YOUR HANDS
Before Returning to Work
Around 100% of these had been altered by miscreants to read:
WAS YOU HA D
Before Returning to Work
When we were very young, we'd gleefully expound on what was being communicated there. Once we actually figured it out, it was kept between my brothers and I/me/us for private snickering. Eventually, the State changed the wording to:
CLEANSE YOUR HANDS
Before Returning to Work
The vandalism ceased.
I agree with @Rex and @Lewis! Incredible constructioneering. And I actually really enjoyed the solve. Thanks, Simeon Seigel.
52A “Crime show extra, informally.” The PERPs in these shows generally have lines so I’m not sure in what world you’d call them extras.
Seriously? It IS a phrase. Not completely true even the day it was invented, but a phrase nonetheless. And the impetus for an entertaining puzzle.
PERP bothered me as the answer for "crime show extra" given that the rule of thumb in case-of-the-week procedurals is that the culprit is the most famous guest star. Otherwise a fun puzzle.
Lots of fun to work out, and I needed to figure out how the theme worked to solve words I did not know. Hurrah! Plus a bonus fun answer: HEAVE HO
Thought of Jonathan Van Ness! Not sure if they still do, but at some point they used all pronouns as well! Also, if Rex happens to see this, it’s sometimes the “typical” pronoun list you’ll see of choices in some kind of survey (he/she/they). My annoyance was that I read “Heshe” like it was a misspelling of Anne Heche’s name and I thought the cluing was wrong lol
My vision of hell: a “Cat Video Fest.”
I dunno. Kinda up and down on this one. But persevered - to the bitter end.
Wanted bland before icier… So I had to rework that… But got the trick at take it in
And aren't we better than stereotyping people who live in the inner city as "mostly uneducated, who use ungrammatical street language in normal conversation through ignorance or laziness?"
I had more fun reading Bob Mills trying to climb out of the hole he dug in comments than with the puzzle!
Medium. I definitely needed to figure out the theme to finish this one.
No costly erasures but I did not know ZORK, SPANS, IPA, LIVE RADAR, and TSENG (and I follow golf).
Tricky and impressive, liked it.
@Bob, in case you didn’t know, “inner-city” implies black or brown people. As others have mentioned, hardly the only demographic that uses vernacular speech, so why single this group out? Worth some self-reflection unless you were just thinking about the great spiritual “I been ‘buked”. Using “suckers” in the clue implied a vernacular phrasing for the entry.
Doubling down by adding “lazy” and “ignorant” is really not a good look.
@Lewis, do you have the date of the Sunday puzzle handy? It would be fun to solve (even knowing the theme).
“Better?” Keep digging, buddy. We all use slang. It’s in the puzzle all the time. The puzzle is under no obligation to serve up Queen’s English 24/7. Plenty of proper grammar users are not “better” in any meaningful sense of the word.
I also wanted ISHMAEL.
I wondered about that, too.
No. Say over again would be redundant.
Re yesterday--I haven't been a reader of mysteries since The Hardy Boys, sorry. Also, there's plenty of vernacular around here in the rural areas, which don't take long to get to.
@Bob Mills, to my Midwestern ear, I BEEN HAD is a normal colloquialism.
At first I thought TAKEI was referring to 'George' of Star Trek fame but I moved on & saw what was going on. And I liked it a lot except for ZORK & TSENG.
Thank you for a fun Thursday, Simeon
(rebus-less! :)
"I been had" has been around as a kind of semi-humorous/face-palm lament -- in comedies, in cartoons, in fiction -- for a long time. In my experience, it's been portrayed as being said by stereotypical rubes/marks/ hayseeds, at least as often as by urbanites ("inner," "outer," or otherwise).
@anon - lol, I referred to it as an “Old Saw” and a “saying”. If that’s not characterizing it as a “phrase”, I’m not much sure how much better that I could do.
This was my first thought, but don't these shows also have shots of police stations with a bunch of PERPs in the background? Would be hard to clue any rôle as a kind of extra if the existence of non-extra versions is disqualifying.
Definitely a cool ThursPuz gimmick to unravel. Enjoyed it.
Ups:
* 16x15 puzgrid. More solvequest for yer moneybucks.
* SEAWEEDWRAP. Almost another possible extra-obscure hint to the puztheme?
* HEAVEHO. Good for a laugh, in the end.
* ARM clue. Cuz I do see a little dab of @RP's upper arm, there in that selfie pic.
* DAR. staff weeject pick. Pairs well with LIVER-A-DAR.
* Neat KLEE clue. Artsy fartsy phraseology.
/
Downs:
* ZORK & TSENG no-knows.
* Only 2 U's.
* STAND clue of mystery. It did have a ?-marker clue, I'd grant.
Thanx, Mr. Seigel dude. My kinda ThursPuz ... feistily be-puzthemed.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
... and now, for M&A's kinda zorker ...
"Imposters" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I know of no rule -- written in stone, on paper, or anywhere else -- dictating that wordplay (which is, after all, what a crossword puzzle is) must adhere to "conventional" or "correct" grammar/syntax in either its clues or its answers. Seems to me about as arbitrary as insisting that only references to "nice" people, or people whose politics/views/beliefs "we" agree with, should be allowed. Since when did a word GAME become an ideological/ grammatical litmus test? Sometimes it seems y'just can't get no satisfaction . . .
WE WUZ ROBBED!! (See how easy it is?)
Were I Goldilocks, I'd give this one a "just right," with a theme that required a fair bit of wrangling before I understood it and provided six mini-puzzles to work out. I got off on the wrong foot with GAME...thinking that there was a missing "PRE" before SERVES that would have to be accounted for in other theme answers, too - but then that made no sense at all for BITTE + RENDER. It took a combination of the reveal plus TAKE IT IN to fully put me in the UP-and-down picture. Understanding the pattern definitely helped me get the Z in ZORK and TONY AWARD. Plenty of entertainment elsewhere, too - the clues for ALI BABA (such a perfect "gotcha" for Ishmael) and ICIER, HEAVE-HO, and IT'S LOVE + KEEPERS.
No one cares that the gimmick in the top right did not follow the "up and down" pattern of all the others ?
whoops...never mind.
Where is "The Muse?" Someone needs to be brung down a peg or two.
I liked this puzzle a lot. Many answers I didn't know, but I could work them all out from the crosses, and they were all interesting facts and words: OARS on the Argo, SIVA, DOMES on the stadia, ZORK, GENII, TSENG. Lots of ambiguous cluing, e.g., for ICIER (How many had BLAND?), GRAZE, RENDER, TAP . . .and the best one, "Score keeper?" Took me a minute to understand that answer—STAND! And I liked all of the theme answers, especially BITTER ENDER and TONY AWARD (great clue: Musical Appreciation?"). And there were fun names and words all around, like KLEE, KIROV, ZORK, CINERAMA, COLE, EMERITI.
Just nothing to complain about, really . . . no offensive names or phrases, very little of the usual three-letter junk. Thank you, Simeon Seigel!
Ever read some of Ezra Pound's letters?
Well, I guess we have to have some unpleasantness every day, and here it is. Thanks, Bob.
I've understood the "he, she, they" as an enumeration of third person pronouns, as in pronoun tables for language learners. So it was a missing "it" that annoyed me instead!
And, the unpleasantness just gets worse and worse. Thanks again, Bob.
Exactly!
@R. Santos Completely agree. The comment shows the writer's own ignorance.
I liked the gimmick, and I particularly liked that the up and down trips varied in length, which made it a lot more fun to try to figure out the answers. I didn't much like having only half of the popular-saying revealer. The MUST COME DOWN part was easily inferred, but it just seemed weird. But you would have to change the grid to bilateral symmetry in order to fit it in, so I see why it was done this way.
I hesitated at KIROV, since he was an assassinated politician, not a dancer -- but it's the name of the company, so OK -- but it would be such a good clue for BOLSHOI (which is Russian for "big") that it seems like a shame to waste it.
Speaking of weird, how about that clue for 14-A? It's both long and convoluted and moo-cow easy. Why bother?
A couple rule-bending entries: a hidden-word clue (CIA in "special ops") where the answer is not spread across both words and repeated ONs at the ends of phrases (READS ON, WAVED ON ... I feel like there was another one, but I can't find it now).
ARBOR DAY has a variable date, but it's not usually in April.
That occurred to me, too.
The rest room signs around here say: "Employees must wash hands before returning to work." I often say to my wife upon my return to the table: "I'm glad I don't work here -- would have to wash my hands."
I wanted Ishmael so badly as well, and thought I was clever for getting it so quickly. :(
p.s.
Dang.
Actually, just realized — today’s puztheme is kinda a second cousin of one I recently published over on the runtpuz site. Comin soon, to these here parts…
M&A
The above comment was by me, who had not noticed that he was not signed in.
Loved it, even though the same corner Rex mentioned forced me to look an answer (TSENG, which I’d have needed every cross for). Rex’s write-up is great, and I’d also mention (apologies for the repeat if someone already mentioned this and I missed it), to add to the construction feat, that the themers all read as plausible fill before the up-down, just not to those clues (BITTE, TAKEI, LIVER, TONYA, ORGAN).
I liked the puzzle a lot. Very clever and well constructed. What I disliked (and always will) are "make believe plurals". IBMS and SERTAS are just words that aren’t spoken. Well, maybe they are if deal in computer and mattress sales, but, really, I stand by my assertion they are not things. My hand raised for thinking Ishmael for 2D. Even after I got ALIBABA, I couldn’t remember him having a famous "opening line". Thanks to Rex for explaining the really clever clue.
"Say over again" is redundant. As a adverb, one meaning of "over" is to express repetition of something ("say over" is to say again; "do over" is to do again) SO "over" and "again" have the same meaning in this expression.
Got to this one later than usual - I usually solve late at night, write a comment, do a quick edit in the morning and hit Publish. Last night I just crashed early. Kind of refreshing, actually.
Most of the things I have written on my note pad have been covered already but aside from adding my compliments regarding the impressive construction and fun clueing I would like to say that I associate IBEENHAD with comics, cartoons and, possibly, old movies featuring someone like James Cagney.
Isn't a PERP more than a "crime show extra"? Wouldn't they be more a centre of interest?
I had 2 serious early errors. Entered SEesto for SERVES at 9D and moveSON for READSON. Because they were in such close proximity, I was flailing up there for quite some time.
Had fun until I finished with half-closed eyes and cashed it in. Thanks, Simeon.
I'm a lot more better than that!!!
Remember -- "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing!" (With apologies to the notorious "inner city" Duke Ellington).
Egs: thx for the memories. Yes, folks did change those signs.
The NE corner was basically impossible. ICIER and ETOLIERS were basically no-gos for me. I had BLAND for 'Needing more salt, perhaps,' and I couldn't move past thinking that the answer must be a synonym for bland.
I didn't "get" the theme trick until the BITTER END. But it was worth the wait.
ZORK doesn't ring a bell. Pong, on the other hand... my best friend Kris and I used to go play it in the K-Mart vestibule 50 years ago. K-Mart and Pong; those were the days.
Also around that time, my Dad shocked us by bringing home a Pong machine. You hooked it to the TV; there were two dials which moved the paddles up and down. Dad explained someone was asking him to invest in a video game company. He decided not to.
I'm embarrassed by my performance on this puzzle. Too much knowledge which I lacked, and I did not grasp the theme to help me in areas where I struggled. And I would never use "PERP" to describe a crime show extra...
Sure -- 5/31/2020. I hope you enjoy it!
trying to climb out? Diggng deeper is more like it
DVRs are part of cable boxes. Smart TVs have apps. This was a terrible clue.
Really nice puzzle, and nice to see Lewis mentioned in the Constructor Notes. There was a similar theme recently by Joe Marquez: Thursday, January 30, 2025
And now for something completely different... a line from an NFL Sideline Chatter video I watched many years ago: "If you would'na did what you woulda did, then we would'n be where we was at to get what we got."
I agree. This really worked for me
Forgot to mention SPANS. I use this system all the time, though I don't often use that term. For instance, if I need to know whether a doorway in the workshop or barn is 32" or 36" and I don't have a tape with me, I just use the "hand-span method". My span is, conveniently, 8", so calculations are pretty easy. It's more than 4 reaches of my fingers but less than 5, it's gotta be 36". Easy. I'll check it later when I find a tape in this mess. I also use it when I'm catching trout; 1 and a half hand spans, about 12 inches. Close enough for horse shoes, hand grenades and fly fishing.
I use a similar method for roughly planning out things like new fencing for pastures. I know my normal walking stride measures 2 and a half feet, so 20 strides is 50 feet and I can order materials based on that calculation. Sounds very medieval, but it kind of works.
Ours was on the hand-dryer: PUSH BUTTON FOR WARM AIR became PUSH BUTT FOR ARM AIR
Thanks, a COVID solve;)
Oof, so close. I saw BITTER ENDER, and got the whole up-and-down idea, but I turned upwards at the second T of BITTE, over the ER of ICIER, and back down the rest of RENDER. So I'm thinking up, then over a square, then back down. Thus no other themer worked at all, though I could see the kinds of things I should be looking for. Sad to get so close and not see the correct trick! This happens more often than I'd like, which is on me, but in this case another word besides ICIER might have helped resolve the ambiguity.
I get to sit at the table with all you'uns who gave high marks for this well-crafted, entertaining puzzle. I especially appreciated that each part of the Across and the Up/Down answers were also legit stand alone entries. Often a word play puzzle like this leaves some ungainly nonwords hanging out there all alone, with no direction known.
Another place to get a SEAWEED WRAP: The kelp beds just off the coast of Point Loma in San Diego. Get too close and your boat will get a WRAP around the keel, rudder and prop. I learned the hard way when our little sloop suddenly slow to a stop and I knew I BEEN HAD!
For me it is "I am", "You are" and "HE, SHE, it is". Why use the plural "they" to refer to a single person? If you're trying to be non-binary inclusive, just use a singular noun, e.g., "this person", rather than the awkward sounding plural "they".
Thanks for the support. Have you noticed ahh the catcalling is from people wh remain anonymous?
Estamos perdidamente patas arriba enamorados.
Quite engaging and fun. I used the theme in the solving process and still had plenty of a battle. TSENG and KIROV bookended a brutal southwest.
I love having just the opening WHAT GOES UP so you have no choice but to finish it. I also love HEAVE HO.
Never heard the phrase BITTER ENDER. Or I BEEN HAD without the 'VE. And it's GENIES, I hope.
People: 9
Places: 1
Products: 9
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 27 of 81 (33%)
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Uniclues:
1 Worship the tray cover.
2 C-SPAN.
3 Planning carving the quaker.
4 Password pro protectors.
5 Result of yelling, "Gimme the ball. I'm open."
6 Love literature in the loony bin.
1 BOW TO DVR'S LID
2 SENATE'S CINERAMA
3 ORGANIZING ARBOR NOTE
4 ALIBABA KEEPERS
5 NEEDY NBA TOUCH (~)
6 READS ON WARD
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Forget the loofah. VEX RUB-A-DUB CLUB.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a huge Infocom game fan, thank you for your service!
I'm a new-ish crossword solver, and I'm quite happy to say thay this was my first Thursday solve without having to check the puzzle! I did have to do a Google or two, but I'm quite proud of myself.
I had the same reaction to PERP, but I think that it is referring to a perp lineup where the witness/victim has to pick the guy out. All but the main criminal are extra perps.
Congrats I still remember my first complete Thursday.....
Sadly, that IPA fun fact is more myth than fact. There is a subcontinent connection, of course (right there in the name and all) but no real evidence it was "designed" for the trip:
https://zythophile.co.uk/2010/03/31/ipa-the-executive-summary/
@Avidtoast 3:47 PM
Woot woot! Congrats.
@burtonkd, your example is funnier, but around here, the hand-dryer's touting "less paper towel litter" got changed to "less ape owl litter."
Not to nitpick, but the opening line to Moby Dick is a comma-less ‘Call me Ishmael. ‘ Not ‘Call me, Ishmael’. It’s a self-identifier, not a request that Ishmael get in touch!
@Avidtoast, You should bve proud of yourself. I've doing these things since about 2008 and I still approach Thursdays with trepidation. I love 'em, but it's that scary kind of love.
I do support the view that the phrasing is non-standard and the clue needed a hint. I don’t support the association of that grammar with certain demographic groups nor the suggestion that use of said grammar implies ignorance or laziness.
All the grammar discussion about say over was pretty impressive
But language is not a math. equation What is often called redundancy is simply emphasizing. In any case say over again is most definitely in the language Actually say over sounded off to me
“I also use it when I'm catching trout; 1 and a half hand spans, about 12 inches.”
Don’t forget the Costanza rule: Add 3 inches if you’re fishing in cold water. You know, to account for shrinkage. ;)
Kitshef
Bitter ender is a thing. I looked it up Also it is a title of an album by Mary Chaplin Carpenter
Grenier
I googled it
First heading
What is the origin of this idio
I been had
It is a thing
Also the ‘ve is often elide without the listener or the speaker being aware of it
Can't say I am able to agree with you, @Phil. Your link says there was no inventor (singular) and no actual invention. These things are hardly ever inventions of one person or one company. They are, as your link points out, slow developments. The clue is a bit shaky, I'll admit. What if it had read 'brew developed for the subcontinent" rather than designed for?
I'd never heard that. I just add 3 inches cuz I'm a lying fisherman.
Good job! I remember the first time I ever encountered one of these tricky Thursday quirks and thought I would never be able to do one without help. A great feeling when you finally get there.
..."frequently uses the term 'inner cities' interchangeably with 'black people'"...
It's not black, it's bah-LACK. As in, 'Sometimes she says she's Indian, sometimes she's bahh-LACK.'
A couple o' the rednecks on one side of my fam, a brother and a sister who lived alone their entire lives out on the farm - their twang, ye'd be lucky to make out a single word. Neither 'black' nor 'bah-LACK' was a part their vocabulary. Mercifully, no sprogs.
Bob, I know you weren't a neighbor.
(I too tried to shoehorn the auxiliary into 30a, thinking it part of a rebus, but I BEEN HAD, very much 'in the language,' as The Blog is wont to read.)
The Lew Chen, before my time. This game, 'crunchy' / 'creamy' / 'zippy' / 'with love and care' / 'what. a. treat.' / 'delish' / 'delish gorgeous sumptuously whoooshy', plus other fey-arse, nonsense language some of yuo people foist on these eyes might be applied if I could reckon what any of that 'outer-city' lazy claptrap means. Thesaurus, people.
Aa'iight, maybe not 'whooshy'.. a skosh over avg, which is to say, slow. What are these called, cryptics? Not a fan, but Riprock is adept. That NOIFSANDSORBUTS [2025-06-05] resolved inside 10 secs, the brilliant Kwong Art Heist [2024-12-15] at the other play-clock end took a few beats, this one somewhere in the middle, free of error. And much as I could do without them, all are more entertaining than the Saturday last [totes agree w/Nancy], none of which resonated. Immediate first guesses at LOPE, HASTEN, ROAN, etc, and lucky tries at ends of multi-part longs backed me into progress and a final time quicker than okanaganer's, which never happens. Not hard, but challenging enough that it was not entertaining, even slightly. The articulate Trimble Galois anecdote, the highlight, not even close.
The Evan Beerhalls [2014-10-18], just completed free of error, was hard, a significant portion of an evening, never to be recovered. I've been doing the daily NYT plus the two non-MON/TUE weekly freebies (the Beerhalls is now on offer) because I do not have to sign-in--yes, I care just enough that I do not want to lose my 100% solve. I ask that there is never a return to that.
Many/most of you crave the struggle bus, straining your wits out, as a log that won't pass, then resorting to consulting ("cheating" seems abrasive), yet finding entertainment in this. Not I. I do not come to learn. Ask me what I already know. Yuo people relish desultory dissections of the ocean of bootless flotsam, whiplashing through petty disagreements.. some of which are entertaining.
The activity is acutely superficial, contextless and it's not the way I absorb, so yes, I would abandon the relevant game before ever consulting during play, which I've nevah done since the first - that, a lugubrious exercise. (And I have deserted games.)
What I am after is humor and clever cluing, and there's been nigh onto zero of the first. Mayhap the software won't vomit it out or the fashioners are a stodgy lot. So I've been resigned to.. 'it is what it is.' (The recent TOUCANS [2025-08-12], cute, but did not see it till curtains, no guffaws over MEXICAN AMERICAN, e.g., so that one, miles behind the Tues top, the Barbara Lin [2024-10-22] and CUT ME SOME SLACKS! - escaping the amusement during play, an impossibility.)
This Sunday past, fine, relatively. And OJ and ENTRÉE worked homophonously and thus seamlessly.
So, Will Shortz, keep doing what you're doing. Plus humor.
P.S. Beezley, w00t?! Axe me.
I as well. Brought back some FANTASTIC childhood memories. I still see some of the rooms and puzzles to this day; those text based games were pretty freakin awesome.
If you are eliminating redundancies, the word to eliminate would be “
over not again. Say again makes senses. Say over is not an expression I’ve ever encountered, and I would find it odd if I heard someone say it.
Gosh I wish my friend was JVN!
Well... I think it's still a no. Beers like it were already sold at "home", the increased hopping regime that the myth implies is distinctive to it was used for other beers, and indeed lots of non-IPA made the same journey. I think "brew named for its association with the subcontinent" is about the best you could say. Maybe that's being pedantic but aren't we all, when a clue awkwardly stumbles into our favourite field?
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