THEME: "Passing Glances" — an "EYE" rebus where one "EYE" square appears in each themer; every theme clue starts with an ellipsis, and the idea is that each one is supposed to start with the phrase "I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE" (63A: Children's game phrase that should start the italicized clues ... or a hint to eight squares in this puzzle) (so the clue describes the spied thing, and each spied thing contains an "EYE" rebus square, or a LITTLE "EYE"):
Theme answers:
CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN (21A: ... something big and rocky with a Space Force base in it)
3D: Showy daisies (OXEYES)
DONKEY EARS (29A: ... something pointy grown by Pinocchio)
13D: Iowan, by another name (HAWKEYE)
ERLENMEYER FLASK (39A: ... something conical in a chemistry lab)
26D: Fast-food chain founded in New Orleans (POPEYE'S)
JAPANESE YEN (46A: ... something round and metallic with kanji written on it)
48D: Hole for a shoelace (EYELET)
SMILEY EMOJI (84A: ... something yellow and happy in a text message)
86D: Shakespearean potion ingredient (EYE OF NEWT)
BREYER'S ICE CREAM (87A: ... something soft and melty in a black tub)
64D: Sleep, informally (SHUTEYE)
HONEYEATER (96A: ... something feathery sipping on nectar)
99D: Scrutinize (EYEBALL)
DOUBLE-YELLOW LINE (111A: ... something long and painted on a highway)
In total, there are 186 species in 55 genera, roughly half of them native to Australia, many of the remainder occupying New Guinea. With their closest relatives, the Maluridae (Australian fairy-wrens), Pardalotidae (pardalotes), and Acanthizidae (thornbills, Australian warblers, scrubwrens, etc.), they comprise the superfamily Meliphagoidea and originated early in the evolutionary history of the oscinepasserine radiation. Although honeyeaters look and behave very much like other nectar-feeding passerines around the world (such as the sunbirds and flowerpeckers), they are unrelated, and the similarities are the consequence of convergent evolution. (wikipedia)
[TUI (3) — not seen in the NYTXW since 2004 😞]
The tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) is a medium-sized bird native to New Zealand. It is blue, green, and bronze coloured with a distinctive white throat tuft (poi). It is an endemicpasserine bird of New Zealand, and the only species in the genusProsthemadera. It is one of the largest species in the diverse Australasian honeyeater family Meliphagidae, and one of two living species of that family found in New Zealand, the other being the New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura). The tūī has a wide distribution in the archipelago, ranging from the subtropical Kermadec Islands to the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands, as well as the main islands. (wikipedia) (my emph.)
• • •
I liked the revealer. I liked that everything being "spied" had a "little 'EYE'" inside it, and I liked that the revealer also made sense of the strange ellipsis-starting clues. Once you know that the clues themselves are written in the style of someone actually playing the game "I Spy," they make a lot more sense. So conceptually, yes, sure, hurray, good job. The execution felt kinda wobbly to me, mostly because "EYE" isn't a particular common letter string to find embedded in a word or phrase, and so (unsurprisingly) some of these answers feel odd or forced or strange. CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN? Is that a place? I assume it is because you're telling me it is, but if CHEYENNE isn't followed by WYOMING (or AUTUMN, actually), then I don't know what it's doing. A Space Force base???? Well, points off for reminding me that Space Force actually exists and is not an ill-conceived and ultimately discarded idea from a scifi show that never made it out of its first season.
Are there other YENs besides the JAPANESE YEN? I see that the currency is formally called that, but it still felt redundant. I have never heard of an ERLENMEYER FLASK (I'm just assuming that ERLENMEYER is one name, I don't know), but that's on me, I'm sure. Just ... out of my wheelhouse, completely. SMILEY EMOJI ... do I call it that? Happy face emoji ... smiley face emoji ... smile emoji ... I think these are more likely to come out of my mouth. I can't really dispute its real thingness, but over and over again, the answers were either "???" or just slightly off, to my ear. The one that landed best for me was HONEYEATER, first because, well, yay, birds! And second, the HONEYEATER "EYE" is doing what I wish every EYE did in a puzzle like this, i.e. break across two words (or word parts) with no additional words left hanging. DONKEY EARS and SMILEY EMOJI do this successfully as well. It always makes me a little sad when words like (today) MOUNTAIN, FLASK, ICE CREAM, and LINE are there but uninvolved in the actual wordplay. "EYE" just doesn't touch those words or have anything to do with them. It's the most elegant expression of the theme, to have every element in every theme answer "EYE"-involved. But thumbs-up for the concept, for sure, and for a generally well-filled grid overall.
Sadly, the theme was very (very very) easy to uncover. Here's how long it took me to uncover:
I know my five-letter crossword flowers, I do. See also OXLIPS (where's my LIP rebus!?—PURSED LIPS? Hmm, not sure PURSED conveys shrunkenness well enough. "MY LIPS ARE SEALED" (inside eight tiny boxes in this grid)?? ... I'm gonna have to work on this). [Showy daisies], starts with "O," that's OXEYES ... but it wouldn't fit ... so I made it fit! Then looked at the puzzle title ("Passing Glances") and knew I did the right thing. The hardest parts of this puzzle were the themers I didn't know, namely the MOUNTAIN part of CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN and basically the whole of ERLENMEYER FLASK (which ... it is one name, right? ERLENMEYER. Not ERLEN MEYER, like OSCAR MAYER ... [looking it up] ... yes! Named after EMIL (4) Erlenmeyer). But as for the theme, once you find the first "EYE," it's basically unvaried thereafter. Seven more "EYE"s, and you know they're coming, which gives you a leg up on all subsequent themers. Clues were toughish in places, but overall this was pretty average in terms of difficulty, maybe a bit on the easy side. Jet lag is still playing tricks on my mind and body, though, so I may just be tired.
If you, like me, have never heard of ERLENMEYER FLASK, then I sure hope you understood the clue on ENS (39D: Several characters in nonfiction?). Otherwise, that first "E" in ERLENMEYER might've been a mystery (or you ended up with a mistake). There are "several" ENS (i.e. the letter "n") in the word "nonfiction," which is what that clue for ENS is getting at. "Letteral" clues like that (where the clue is pointing to a letter inside of itself rather than pointing to an answer in conventional fashion) often trip people up, so if that happened to you, you weren't alone, I guarantee it. Also, if you, like me, didn't know MEM (?) (6D: First letter of "menorah," in Hebrew) ... well, I'm less afraid there, as all the crosses seem solid—even if you didn't know MOUNTAIN, I think you can guess from the clue language ("big and rocky") that the answer was probably not gonna be the CHEYENNE FOUNTAIN (I might buy MEF as a Hebrew letter, but CHEYENNE FOUNTAIN—unlikely).
And the rest!:
1A: Helpful site for a D.I.Y.'er (EHOW) — still haven't visited this site, ever. Only ever seen it in xwords. "Getting rid of the human editors who formerly identified and approved content to be produced increased profits for the company by a factor of 20–25 times" (wikipedia). So ... probably not going to be visiting it any time soon, then.
72A: Alfred E. ___, mascot of Mad magazine (NEUMAN) — still misspelling this name, despite knowing the mascot in question since I was like 6. NEWMAN v. NEUMAN ... I had a girlfriend in college with the last name NEUMAN, you'd think I could manage the distinction, but no. I think my brain's logic must be something like, "well, I obviously liked my girlfriend, and I don't really fancy this Alfred E. guy, so his name must be the other spelling." And yet no.
87A: ... something soft and melty in a black tub (BREYER'S ICE CREAM) — forgot to ask: why is the ice cream "soft and melty"??? Is it because we're playing "I Spy" in the back of a hot car after a trip to the supermarket? Because otherwise I don't get it. "Cold and creamy" would make sense. "Soft and melty" is a product failure.
12D: Wedge placed next to a wheel to prevent it from moving (CHOCK) — had no idea this had a name. I wanted SHIM (not long enough).
31D: ___ idéal (BEAU) — realizing just now that I know the phrase but not (really) what it means: "A mental conception or image of any object, moral or physical, in its perfect typical form, free from all the deformities, defects, and blemishes accompanying its actual existence; a model of excellence in the mind or fancy; ideal excellence" (wordnik). Just sounds like an "ideal" to me, but OK.
45D: Newswoman Phillips (KYRA) — no idea, but then I watch TV news exactly zero minutes per year, so ... not surprising.
61D: Smash to smithereens (ATOMIZE) — wanted this (the letters fit) but this word doesn't make me think of smashing. It makes me think of ... misting? Doesn't an ATOMIZEr spray mist? Or perfume or whatever? Yes, it "converts a substance [...] to a fine spray" (wordnik). But I guess if you smash something into tiny particles, that is also a form of atomizing.
76D: Can you believe it? (-ISM) — I cannot. As in, I cannot believe this non-word continues to get foisted on me year after year. Any belief system is, technically, an -ISM. And if you didn't know, well now you know.
90A: Place with moving exhibits (ZOO) — because the animals ... move around? In their cages? Huh. That must be it. Still, weird phrasing.
23A: "So weird..." ("HOW ODD...") — don't love the "HOW" dupe (see 1A: EHOW). Also don't love the "YELLOW" dupe (in the clue for SMILEY EMOJI ("something yellow...") as well as in the answer DOUBLE YELLOW LINE)
86D: Shakespearean potion ingredient (EYE OF NEWT) — best answer in the grid, I think. Best of the "EYE" crosses, for sure.
That's all for me today. Belated thanks to all the writers who filled in for me while I was away in Santa Barbara, which is basically a perfect place. Sunny and 70s every day, extensive running and bicycle lanes along the oceanfront, at least two really fine cocktail bars ... oh &^$%!!!!!! I was supposed to get in touch with one of you (my gentle readers) about getting a cocktail, and I said I would, and then I got swept up in family stuff and didn't. Dammit! I'm sure the person in question would've been lovely, and ... well, a free drink is a free drink. Ugh. OK, off to write an apology email, I guess. Annnnyway, Santa Barbara has it all. Including, sadly, fires, as well as a cost of living that is likely a bit beyond me. But I will be back, for sure. Here are some photos:
[me stalking the elusive Great Blue Heron (note: not actually elusive)]
[snowy egrets, having a heated discussion]
[these cacti were actually at the Huntington Museum, near Pasadena]
[every plant looks like it's out of a scifi movie]
[absorbing the local culture]
[my stepbrother rented a giant van to drive the whole family around in, then invented a fake company and had tshirts, hats, and other merch made, including this magnet to put on the side of the van. 100% commitment to the bit!]
This is why I swore off Sundays for so long. Big, tedious, with no appreciable pay-off.
CHEYENNEMOUNTAIN, ERLENMEYERFLASK!!!, BREYERSICECREAM, DOUBLEYELLOWLINE. I hate little pictures in texts but I found SMILEYEMOJI to be a high point in this crossword wasteland.
Hope some of you liked it. I just failed to find much sparkle.
@Rex, Best part of doing this puzzle was reading your write-up and seeing your pics, especially the bus sign by your step brother. Every family needs a guy like that!
I almost always find Sundays a slog, so I was gonna skip this one, but then I had a few minutes until I was due to go to tonight's Peachfest concert so I started, and well once you've started... so I finished it after the concert. (And you see, I had gone to the Men Without Hats concert Wednesday night and it was the greatest thing ever! While I kinda liked them back in the day, now I think their songs are really great; best free concert ever. But tonight's was Econoline Crush whose name I recognize; I listened to a couple of their songs on Youtube and thought I liked them but tonight's concert... just not a fan. Oh well.)
Anyway, oh yeah the puzzle, I didn't mind it! Lots of EYE rebii scattered around. I had a major "what the??" moment at 104 across "Single facial feature" when I typed in EYEBROW and thought: okay, Will has let a lot of the rules lapse lately, but surely if the theme rebii are EYEs, we can't have a normal EYE in an answer? Turns out: no. UNIBROW it is. I wonder if that was deliberate? If so: sassy! If not, just a fun accident, I guess.
Typeover: CHOP before CHEW for "make easier to swallow".
I don't know if it's pure randomness or I'm having a particularly good week or what, but I've found all the puzzles to be much easier than the reviewers did.
...Except for Thursday, which remains my Achilles' Heel for some reason. This week, it was slower than my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Anyway, my biggest mistake today was confusing WANTON for WONTON, which is pretty silly if you ask me.
Golly, I hadn't thought about an ERLENM[EYE]R FLASK (39A) since my pre-teen chemistry set days. I seem to recall that there were (still are?) two types of flask: Erlenmeyer are shaped like an inverted funnel and Florence have a round bottom with a long neck. Both often figure in mad scientists' laboratories.
The puzzle was Easy, for all the reasons @Rex cited, with all his WOEs as well.
Figured out the rebus trick quickly, but never heard of HONEYEATERS (I had "honey egrets," even though I've never heard of them, either). The fill was very hard in places, especially ERLENMEYERFLASK and UNIBROW. I also had "Cheyenne Fountain." Just another Sunday failure for me.
I liked how the EYE was not an EYE in the Across answers but was an EYE in the downs. Even though it didn't break across words in every Across I'm still impressed at the consistency of the use of EYE as a letter string Across and as a word Down. Otherwise I found this on the easier side of medium, especially after SUSSing out the theme. I liked it better than @Rex--but maybe that's because ERLENMEYER FLASK was an "Oh, right!" for me rather than a WOE.
Absolutely fantastic getting ERLENMEYER FLASK into a grid. Loved the trick - nothing highly nuanced or sophisticated but fun to grok and satisfying. Revealer was apt and splashy.
WONTON, EYE OF NEWT, I’M TORN are all top notch. TOSTADAS, DONKEY EARS - this puzzle really brings it. Could have done without SNOWDEN and REID and needed all the crosses for KYRA.
I thought something soft and melting was a clue about brie cheese but, obviously it wouldn't fit. I agree with Rex that it's a bad way to describe ice cream.
I grew up in Colorado Springs and went to cheyenne mountain high school. When I saw that and erlenmeyer flask I thought hoo boy this is going to be a rough puzzle for a lot of people.
Same here for knowing ERLENMEYER FLASK from my childhood chemistry-set days. My cheapo little set didn’t have one, though, which put a crimp in my mad-scientist routine.
Better-than-average Sunday puzzle today. Kinda like “Pretty Good Bus Tours,” but with an extra half star.
I came out of the top half pretty bruised and beat up - I never heard of the grid-spanning revealer or the chem lab FLASK, and getting to JAPANESE YEN took about all of the energy I could muster.
I settled down a bit and was able to make some modest progress south of the equator. I agree with a previous poster that this felt more like work than any sort of a hobby, and for me there was little if any payoff as well.
Hopefully there is a large sweet spot of fans of this type of thing in the multitude of NYT solvers so the constructor gets some reward for their effort, but for me at least it would be a hard pass.
At least two things you could learn from watching Breaking Bad:
--What an Erlenmeyer Flask is, its function and purpose, and how it differs from other flasks.
--that in order to ensure a chemically pure and stable product with no adulterants or contamination that performs as advertised, one must never leave a jar ajar.
I liked this puzzle and drew a little eye into the rebus squares rather then writing EYE in them. ERLENMEYERFLASK will be familiar to those who've taken a chemistry lab in college (or, as @Conrad points out, with a chemistry set at home). CHEYENNEMOUNTAIN, I knew from NORAD and such -- Yes, @Anonymous 5:11 AM, War Games has been airing of late around my parts. Favorite clues were 8A ("Need for a transfer of power?"), 71A ("Mega-store"), and 68D ("Sort who won't heed the advice 'Don't look down'?").
Hey All ! An EYE for ... MY EYE. Had a sneaky suspicion we were looking for a Rebus when I got to clue (48 Down) Hole for a shoelace, as it was only 4 letters. What else is an EYELET called? Nothing, as far as I know. So my Rebus Detector was flashing. Confirmed at good ole OXEYES. Then set about to SUSS out the rest.
Nice puz. I don't get hung up on whether or not the Rebus is slashed twixt two words or not. As long as it makes sense in both the Across and Down, it's kosher.
Nice fill, easily figureoutable, no OYEs. Thanks for an entertaining SunPuz co-constructors!
Well, that's not at all how we played I SPY. Ours was "I spy with my little eye, something that begins with -", where that "-" represents a letter of the alphabet. That's all the hint you got.
If you’ve ever been to Colorado Springs, and especially if you’ve stayed at the Broadmoor, you’ve no doubt seen Cheyenne Mountain as a prominent part of the beautiful skyline that is the Colorado Rockies (although, to be fair, it’s outdone by its big brother, Pike’s Peak. There’s a wonderful little zoo along the mountain, the highest in the U.S. (oh, it’s called "Cheyenne Mountain Zoo" for reasons that escape me) and the most arduous place to push two kids in a tandem stroller. But Cheyenne Mountain is best known as the home of NORAD, a place that for decades kept safe the people and equipment needed to fire nuclear ICBMs at the Soviet Union (ah, the good old days!). As someone said, the movie "War Games" largely took place inside Cheyenne Mountain/NORAD ("A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?")
Enjoyed Rex’s write up and pics. Step-brother has likeable sense of humor. Thought puzzle was a fun hunt for the “eye”s. Roaming around the grid, EYELET was the giveaway for me, then OXEYE fell into place and the rest followed. Lots of little edits to things like WoNTON (must have been the Chinese dinner I had the other night) for WANTON and wire for CORD. Never heard of the —FLASK, so learned something there.
Not about the puzzle…but if you’ve never been to Los Olivos I highly recommend a day trip. You can walk from one wine tasting room to the next in the 2-3 block downtown. My favorites are Stolpman and Fess Parker. Good food, too.
Absolutely impossible. Had more "words" i've never heard of than any NYTXW I can recall (and I can recall a lot of 'em), and to top it all off when I finished I got neither happy music nor The Message that I had something wrong. Do better, NYT.
Same here @kitshef. I had to soak in what Rex said about the ellipses and how one would play the game. I think that would’ve been beyond my capabilities playing the road trip game at 6!
Thank goodness I know about ox-eye daisies, or I would not have made much progress up front in the NW corner. But I do, so I did. I enjoyed this puzzle; I don't know the Cheyenne Mountain or Erlen Meter, and I don't know what the Japanese yen looks like, but all the crosses allowed me to get those answers. Liked the clue for ZOO (Place with moving exhibits), ENS (Several characters in nonfiction?). Learned the word "chock." Was unsure of the DAP/PHAT combo (thought it could have been DAT/THAT) but got it right. All in all, a fun if not exceptional Sunday puzzle.
So I decided to do the on line NYT version of this after struggling to read tiny print for so long so of course today is a rebus and I have never learned how to enter one and don't plan to start now, thus my completed puzzle has empty spaces where I would have drawn an eye and had some fun. Just my luck.
Caught on at the JAPAPESEYEN/EYELET cross and would have zoomed through the themers if I had known CHEYENNE or ERLENMEYER. Also have never encountered a HONEYEATER, wrong part of the world.
Only totally new proper was KYRA. And my DIY site is youtube. Video instructions for just about anything.
Nice one, AW a CD. I like a Sunday that is neither A Waste of time or a Complete Disaster and thanks for all the fun.
This is the weekend of our local music festival, four acts a day for three days in a park, one stage at one end, one at the other. When an act is over you take your lawn chair to the other end and away you go. We've seen some first-class musicians, it ends at a reasonable hour, and it's all free. If that's not nice, I don't know what is.
Personal note, by favorite so far has been a guy named Buffalo Nichols who plays acoustic blues/slide/bluegrass and has a wonderful voice. Check him out if that's appealing.
Not even 10 am & I'm off to find my typo. Great Rebus! 3D OXEYE was my revealer & I went on from there. Gotta say though that ERLENM(EYE)RFLASK was a WOE as was (EYE) OF NEWT & MRE. But I enjoyed it except that looking for my typo (as usual) in a Sunday grid sucks. Thank you, Adam & Chandi for an enjoyable rebus. And Rex, for sharing the photos :)
The print edition has taken to doing a terrible terrible thing - printing "tips for today's crossword puzzle" on page 3 of the front section. (They're not tips, they're answers and giveaways.) Anyone actually doing the puzzle would want to avert their eyes, and who else would be remotely interested? I cannot understand the thinking behind this.
I was pleased to see that this Sunday offering had some early resistance, and once I found the EYEs it still had resistance and I needed the dang EYES for figuring out things like CHEYENNE and DONKEYEARS. (I’d temporarily forgotten about Pinocchio growing the ears!)
I can’t figure out if I’m bemused or amused when comments say the puzzle had no or very little “pay-off.” I’m not sure what that means and I guess it’s individual. Maybe it’s a feeling you wasted your time. Funny, because I always kinda feel like I’m wasting time doing a puzzle so I’m not sure I’d recognize if there was a pay-off.
Figured out the theme pretty quickly and filled in a good chunk of the grid on my first pass. DOUBLE YELLOW LINE, ERLENMEYER FLASK, and SMILEY EMOJI came quickly, but the other themers took a ton of crosses because they were all out of my wheelhouse. I don't remember Pinoccio getting DONKEY EARS, but I haven't seen the film since I was a very small child, if ever. I know YEN are JAPANESE but like Rex I never actually use that term. I was expecting the front half of that clue to be a denomination or something.
As often happens with Sundays, the fill killed me. I got most of the puzzle but the NE corner was impenetrable. I finally had to use the reveal button on CHEW and SHANIA before I could complete it. DNF :-(
The PPP chunking around ERLENMEYERFLASK made this puzzle undoable...having never heard of this thing, I had to rely on the crossing clues to suss it out, and they, too turned out, many of them to be PPP: some newswoman, some TV or movie actor...stuff I can only guess at...fie on naticks, fie!
DNF. I had GAsBAR and LAs at 55A and 42D. I had no idea what Boystown was about and I figured LAs worked as in a sung melody with la-la-la… A good wrong answer, but wrong nonetheles.
I grew up just north of Santa Barbara (my brother still lives in the area) so I really loved seeing your photos! It brought me back lots of memories :) I’m living in another country now, and am avoiding traveling to the US for the time being, so I will just have to enjoy your photos for now!
After catching on at JAPANESE YEN x EYELET, I enjoyed going on the hunt for the remaining little EYES. Earlier, I'd wondered about OXEYES, but I couldn't make sense of the cross and abandoned the area. Later, seeing CHEYENNE come into view was a rewarding EYE-opener. I also wondered if I'd gone wrong somehow with ERLE...was ERLE Stanley Gardner involved? So, my "oh, my gosh, it's ERLENMEYER FLASK!" moment was the day's highlight (not sure how I know it: chemistry for me was a blur of having no idea what was going on). And I loved that the EYE OF NEWT found its way into the mix. A treat of a Sunday for me.
Where on earth does the EYE go in CHANNEMOUNTAIN? I have OXAS for the unknown daisies, I worked on that section long, long ago before I had the revealer, and I just can't fig--
Aha!!! The EYE goes after the CH!!! CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN!!! Giving me OXEYE (which I have heard of, after all.) And, finally, now I'm done!!!
But so much suffering beforehand. Too much suffering to really be fun. But there's huge pride on finishing. And grudging appreciation for the dense and skillful embedding of EYE. A really good rebus -- just very long and very hard.
I didn't understand the italicized clues at first reading any more than you did. So why didn't I go immediately to the revealer -- which would have eliminated so much initial suffering? Beats me. That's absolutely what a sane person should do in such a situation.
I knew there was an I SPY game played in a car. It may even go back to my own childhood. I didn't know the full title was I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE.
After getting the revealer, the first themer I got was BREYERS ICECREAM/SHUTEYE. Then JAPANESE YEN/EYELET. Then SMILEY EMOJI/EYE OF NEWT. (I remember EYE OF NEWT! Macbeth.)
I worked very hard on this challenging but admirable puzzle. So where's my reward? I think my reward is that I'm finally finished!
Fun Fact: the ERLENMEYER FLASK used in Breaking Bad recently sold at auction for $2,240 - though I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who could have gotten it for you cheaper.
Same here. Haven't seen an erlenmeyer flask since high school chemistry class 57 years ago, and I impressed myself by getting it from just a few letters.
PPS -What happened to Patrick Berry? I miss his excellent little puzzles in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. It looks like he has been replaced by someone named Eric Berlin…
Agreed, somewhat sneaky. I got it quickly because somewhere in the back of my mind "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (just the title, not any of the content) still resided.
Am I the only one gobsmacked by Rex's immediate unraveling of the theme, just a few seconds in? Yes, he says "I know my five-letter crossword flowers, I do." Except that the answer has four letters. What is amazing (to me) is that in the face of this fact, he still never second-guesses what the flower is, or even whether E-HOW is indeed the answer to 1, he just jams OX(EYE)S in and it works! I think he must have a sixth sense, or perhaps he is just bolder in taking chances in crosswords than I ever expect myself to be.
I didn't know LAY for ballad. I guess that answer was unremarkable for an English professor -- hence MS alias RP didn't remark on it.
A more surprising discovery is that I never knew the true definition of WANTON. I'd always assumed it meant something like "unfettered, unrestrained".
I was momentarily confused by 19D: I wanted to put in "black(eye)" at first, but that would have made two horizontally adjacent (eye)s, the other one being in POP(EYE)S. Did anyone else experience that?
D’oh @kishef…Um, yeah…it WOULD be easier if tailored for a child…something that goes moo, etc. At least with just the letter you could blurt out, BARN, BILLBOARD, BLUEBIRD!
Sorry if I didn't make it clear, Beezer. "Pay-off" may sound too dramatic. I don't really need flashing lights, sirens, confetti everywhere, and the popping of champagne corks. @SouthSide Johnny likened it to "hard work" with little to show for it. Agreed. And @Nancy said "I worked very hard on this challenging but admirable puzzle. So where's my reward? I think my reward is that I'm finally finished!" That was well said. I guess I just want more than "finally finished" as a reward.
Out here in coastal southwestern British Columbia we often travel by ferry and if you're the first or last vehicle to board, your wheels get chocked so that, if there's any kind of "impact incident" you don't get pushed off the boat.
@RP: Nice vacay-pics! Thanx for sharin! Primo weird-ball tree, btw.
I got mixed feelings about this SunPuz rodeo. Humor-wise, it was pretty much a nuthinburger, altho the puztheme revealer was kinda cute. Solvequest nanoseconds-wise, it was mostly fairly smoooth, altho ERLENMEYERFLASK was a total no-know, and NIKKI & KYRA were no help at all.
staff weeject pick of 30 candidates: EYE. Apologies to all 30 candidates.
Got the EYE rebus early-on, due to havin traveled real near to Ch(eye)nne Mountain, once long ago. But, but ... I almost mistakenly started up an EAR rebus, at DONK(EYE)ARS. Narrow escape, for the precious nanoseconds.
Fave thing: BREYERSICECREAM, which was much more friendly and tastier than its symmetric(al) themer whatever-FLASK.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Wagner dude & Ms. Deitmer darlin. Definitely a giant 8-eyed beast.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
... This comin week is officially Elvis Week! [And maybe also Rebus Week??] anyhoo ... let us celebrate ...
@Okanagener. No plans to visit your wonderful valley this summer but we've been enjoying our own little Peachfest with all the wonderful, luscious fruits showing up in the produce aisles over the last few weeks. So good. Thank you, OK farmers for not turning every available acre into vineyards.
Like Rex didn’t know the flask but as a retired airline tech knew chock I’ve chocked many an airliner not so funny story my coworkers in Guam would park a DC-10 on an inclined ramp for maintenance the guy on the ground would literally throw a chock behind the nose wheel the guy in the cockpit would set the breaks except this night the breaks weren’t set? Aircraft jumped the chock rolled backwards through the fence into someone’s house extensive damage to house and aircraft
@Les, there aren't as many tree fruit orchards as there used to be; certainly a lot of acres of peaches and cherries have been replaced with grapes. But not all!
I am nowhere near the savvy solver that Rex is, but I was confident in ox-eyes because 1) that kind of daisy appears often in the crossword, and 2) I knew 6 Across most likely started with with TAX. So those things made me put it right in, too.
SharonAK @Rex Loved your photo of the snowy egrets. Have never seen them do anything more active than wade. Loved the "zoo" clue. Thought of it as clever rather than weird phrasing. Definitely had me thinking in other directions until I had the z.
Having had a chemistry prof parent finally paid off here! I used to have to hang around the lab for an hour or two after school before getting driven home, I learned lots of names of things (no phone to play on back then...)
SharonAK @ Anon 6:26 I hadn't noticed the eye being an eye in all the downs. Thanks for pointing it out. And what's with the ANondirectly under you?There is an eye sound in some but there is certainly no eye in Japanese yen or double yellow
It's the same reason Fridays & Saturdays are skewing easier: the more people that get hooked on doing the puzzle and playing other games, the more existing all access subscriptions are retained and the more new ones are brought into the fold. On just a dozen years, the NYTimes has shifted from being just a newspaper publisher to being an online marketing behemoth that publishes a newspaper.
Found today a slog, like all silly game puzzles. But I ABIDEd all the unknown proper names and finally finished!....um, with an error. I had entered ERLENMEYER GLASS. SYRA and GRASER made as much sense to me as KYRA and FRASER.
OTOH, because of my advanced age, many of the proper names and other words that flummoxed the youngsters here came quite easily. OMAR, REID, CHOCK, NEUMAN, OATES, AGEE, DAG and other AGE-OLD stuff went in swiftly.
I liked the puzzle but have issues with the NSA-whistle blower clue - he wasn't a whistle-blower. He is a person who leaked classified information instead of raising concerns through the appropriate channels
Right, but it *meant* eye in one direction, whereas it was just part of the answer (something spied) in the other direction. Which is what both Rex and the original commenter said.
LAY was clued as "Ballad" earlier this year (on a TUESDAY, if you can believe that), and it upset me so much that I remembered it this time (although whether it was lay or ley had to wait on crosses).
I lived for close to 4 years across the street from one of those clubs. Walked my dog past their front door almost every night and I don't recall ever seeing anyone go in or out. Must've been a secret back door somewhere, maybe with a posted menu featuring that particular soup.
Yinchiao I get the dead tree addition. I always do the puzzle first. Then the blog, then the paper itself Most of the time I forget that page 3 exists and don’t read it. I understand complaints about spoilers, but if someone (who probably doesn’t know about this blog!) wants to look at page 3 after doing the puzzle, I think it performs a service. And those starting out looking for training wheels , to each their own. I don’t think putting that page 3 column in is a bad thing. On the other hand, making the puzzle too easy is another story.
the frogman et al. I didn’t get LAY right away but the clue was singular so it couldn’t be an S. Then I remembered LAY which even appeared this year and I am sure many other occasions. Yes it’s crosswordese and but I don’t see it being any worse than all the other crosswordese that appears regularly. I don’t think it’s in any unfair.
I stared at ADJS for at least two minutes wondering what the heck ADJS are. Gnomes? Elves? Dwarves? Do blue guys with beards have another name? Anglican Diode Jumpers? I read this blog early today and no mention. I checked the NYTXW blog, nothing. Two hours later on my way to work ... Adjectives. Ugh.
Had this puzzle done with the little i's and it said nope. So I typed in all the EYEs and it was happy. Overall, the puzzle felt uneven to me. Plenty of clanks on my jolly way.
EHOW was the only permanent struggle. Ended the puzzle where I began because of all the buttons in all the world a HAHA button isn't something I would ever imagine being necessary. A world filled with too many humorless people all staring at a HAHA button asking themselves, "What do I do with that?"
Had fun putting most of this together. Delightful and amusing to meet the Tellum. Don't know how I knew ERLENMEYER FLASK, but I did. Glad honey eater was the word of the day as I'd never heard of them.
1 Self-styled gorilla offering a seminar called, "God wants you to succeed." 2 Fancy dance celebrating your eye healing up a month after you thought you were being so funny and so smart when you said that thing to your wife's friend.
1 ABUNDANTEER APE 2 LONG LOST SHINER GALA (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Naughty Bovidae in boots on your lap. TABOO GOGO GOAT.
@Beezer 10:21 AM "Funny, because I always kinda feel like I’m wasting time doing a puzzle...." Exactly! I wish I could explain how much this resonates with me. Joyous wasted time.
I spy with my Elder Millennial eye something 90s flavored – War Games, X-Files, Fresh Price of BELAIR, The Little Mermaid, The Mummy, Magnolia, SHANIA, Radiohead. PHAT!
It took me a while to find out that it was a rebus puzzle (I know about OXEYES and OXLIPS, but ETSY sure is a site for a DIYer... so I couldn't see OX[EYE]S) and when I did get it, I had a KEY square in DON[KEY] EARS with the wedge being some kind of KEY. Then I saw the EYEs in CH[EYE]NNE and JAPANES[EYE]N, and my KEY rebus + E became K + [EYE], finally. Only then did I remember the HAWK[EYE] State (I'm not from the US) and I could correct IT'S ODD to HOW ODD. The rest of the solve was a lot smoother.
I'm a math major, and there's a mathematician named John von NEUMANN, two Ns. Another variant!
Almost everyone on this blog has more than likely used or seen one of those flasks in their chemistry class at some point in their education, although you probably just called it a flask. Chemistry was one of the subjects you had to take in order to get a diploma when I was in High School. Also had a chemistry set when I was a kid, but can't remember for the life of me if it came with one .
Breyers Ice Cream has turned to absolute garbage since being bought by Unilever. In fact, some flavors can't even be called ice cream anymore. Prior to the buyout they were all natural ingredients. Now the ingredient list looks like a chemistry experiment.
I don't recall the "I spy" game existing when I was a kid, but do recall slug bug, or as others called it punch bug. The first one to spot a VW Beetle got to hit the person next to them in the arm. Me and my brothers hit hard.
Just finishing on Monday so probably the final comment on this fine Sunday puzzle. A few observations:
LAY - only know this is a ballad because of perhaps the worst college song ever, that of my alma mater: "Hail! Alma Mater, we sing to thy praise, Great our affection; tho’ feeble our lays Nesting of peaceful and calm ‘neath the hill Fondly we love thee our dear old McGill."
Fortunately, having studied Chemistry there, ERLENMEYERFLASK was a gimme once the EYE theme became apparent. Talking of which, didn't we just have the CBS EYE in Saturday's puzzle?
EHOW: Are you serious? Had to be ETSY! Also would have thought BEAU GESTE, BEAU DOMMAGE or BEAU MONDE were better known than BEAU IDÉAL.
DNF due to the ACELAS, GNC, TOSTADOS, KIDA corner. Otherwise a pleasant slog.
I crawl into bed and do the weekend puzzle before falling asleep every night - five night later, I've finally finished this one. Well, I had that flask wrong in three places, though I did know LAY. But I was going for something pLAsm. I drink wine in bed only when I do the weekend puzzles, so I like the puzzles that challenge me for several days, and this was no exception. (I missed typing the first letter of puzzles, and the correction dialog that came up offered me three other _uzzle words, but not puzzles!)
Seeing the photos wasn't the best part of doing the puzzle, but it was right up there.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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115 comments:
This is why I swore off Sundays for so long. Big, tedious, with no appreciable pay-off.
CHEYENNEMOUNTAIN, ERLENMEYERFLASK!!!, BREYERSICECREAM, DOUBLEYELLOWLINE. I hate little pictures in texts but I found SMILEYEMOJI to be a high point in this crossword wasteland.
Hope some of you liked it. I just failed to find much sparkle.
@Rex, Best part of doing this puzzle was reading your write-up and seeing your pics, especially the bus sign by your step brother. Every family needs a guy like that!
I almost always find Sundays a slog, so I was gonna skip this one, but then I had a few minutes until I was due to go to tonight's Peachfest concert so I started, and well once you've started... so I finished it after the concert. (And you see, I had gone to the Men Without Hats concert Wednesday night and it was the greatest thing ever! While I kinda liked them back in the day, now I think their songs are really great; best free concert ever. But tonight's was Econoline Crush whose name I recognize; I listened to a couple of their songs on Youtube and thought I liked them but tonight's concert... just not a fan. Oh well.)
Anyway, oh yeah the puzzle, I didn't mind it! Lots of EYE rebii scattered around. I had a major "what the??" moment at 104 across "Single facial feature" when I typed in EYEBROW and thought: okay, Will has let a lot of the rules lapse lately, but surely if the theme rebii are EYEs, we can't have a normal EYE in an answer? Turns out: no. UNIBROW it is. I wonder if that was deliberate? If so: sassy! If not, just a fun accident, I guess.
Typeover: CHOP before CHEW for "make easier to swallow".
I don't know if it's pure randomness or I'm having a particularly good week or what, but I've found all the puzzles to be much easier than the reviewers did.
...Except for Thursday, which remains my Achilles' Heel for some reason. This week, it was slower than my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Anyway, my biggest mistake today was confusing WANTON for WONTON, which is pretty silly if you ask me.
Easy and fun and breezy! I got the rebus with HAWKEYE and it was a pretty whooshy solve from there on.
Cute idea with a great reveal, liked it.
Golly, I hadn't thought about an ERLENM[EYE]R FLASK (39A) since my pre-teen chemistry set days. I seem to recall that there were (still are?) two types of flask: Erlenmeyer are shaped like an inverted funnel and Florence have a round bottom with a long neck. Both often figure in mad scientists' laboratories.
The puzzle was Easy, for all the reasons @Rex cited, with all his WOEs as well.
I only know Cheyenne Mountain because of the movie WarGames. It’s the home of the WOPR!
Figured out the rebus trick quickly, but never heard of HONEYEATERS (I had "honey egrets," even though I've never heard of them, either). The fill was very hard in places, especially ERLENMEYERFLASK and UNIBROW. I also had "Cheyenne Fountain." Just another Sunday failure for me.
I liked how the EYE was not an EYE in the Across answers but was an EYE in the downs. Even though it didn't break across words in every Across I'm still impressed at the consistency of the use of EYE as a letter string Across and as a word Down. Otherwise I found this on the easier side of medium, especially after SUSSing out the theme. I liked it better than @Rex--but maybe that's because ERLENMEYER FLASK was an "Oh, right!" for me rather than a WOE.
Absolutely fantastic getting ERLENMEYER FLASK into a grid. Loved the trick - nothing highly nuanced or sophisticated but fun to grok and satisfying. Revealer was apt and splashy.
LAY of the Sunflower
WONTON, EYE OF NEWT, I’M TORN are all top notch. TOSTADAS, DONKEY EARS - this puzzle really brings it. Could have done without SNOWDEN and REID and needed all the crosses for KYRA.
THEM
Highly enjoyable Sunday morning solve - already on my BOTY list.
Tonight I feel like Elvis longing for his LONG LOST twin
To “Pull chocks” is a very common expression in the aviation world meaning to get rolling with your airplane.
Aw, I was hoping you’d drop the Old 97’s “Indefinitely” for its “double yellow line” lyric… :-)
I put an eye emoji in instead of EYE at first. was hoping that would work lol! (it did not)
I thought something soft and melting was a clue about brie cheese but, obviously it wouldn't fit. I agree with Rex that it's a bad way to describe ice cream.
I grew up in Colorado Springs and went to cheyenne mountain high school. When I saw that and erlenmeyer flask I thought hoo boy this is going to be a rough puzzle for a lot of people.
Easy for 2/3, then a slog the final 1/3 (NE and NW for me). Hardest for me was JAPANESEYEN. That final n was elusive.
Same here for knowing ERLENMEYER FLASK from my childhood chemistry-set days. My cheapo little set didn’t have one, though, which put a crimp in my mad-scientist routine.
Better-than-average Sunday puzzle today. Kinda like “Pretty Good Bus Tours,” but with an extra half star.
I came out of the top half pretty bruised and beat up - I never heard of the grid-spanning revealer or the chem lab FLASK, and getting to JAPANESE YEN took about all of the energy I could muster.
I settled down a bit and was able to make some modest progress south of the equator. I agree with a previous poster that this felt more like work than any sort of a hobby, and for me there was little if any payoff as well.
Hopefully there is a large sweet spot of fans of this type of thing in the multitude of NYT solvers so the constructor gets some reward for their effort, but for me at least it would be a hard pass.
At least two things you could learn from watching Breaking Bad:
--What an Erlenmeyer Flask is, its function and purpose, and how it differs from other flasks.
--that in order to ensure a chemically pure and stable product with no adulterants or contamination that performs as advertised, one must never leave a jar ajar.
Hell yeah, bitch!
I liked this puzzle and drew a little eye into the rebus squares rather then writing EYE in them. ERLENMEYERFLASK will be familiar to those who've taken a chemistry lab in college (or, as @Conrad points out, with a chemistry set at home). CHEYENNEMOUNTAIN, I knew from NORAD and such -- Yes, @Anonymous 5:11 AM, War Games has been airing of late around my parts. Favorite clues were 8A ("Need for a transfer of power?"), 71A ("Mega-store"), and 68D ("Sort who won't heed the advice 'Don't look down'?").
I enjoyed Rex’s write-up, but just want to point out that animals in zoos are no longer in cages.
Hey All !
An EYE for ... MY EYE.
Had a sneaky suspicion we were looking for a Rebus when I got to clue (48 Down) Hole for a shoelace, as it was only 4 letters. What else is an EYELET called? Nothing, as far as I know. So my Rebus Detector was flashing. Confirmed at good ole OXEYES. Then set about to SUSS out the rest.
Nice puz. I don't get hung up on whether or not the Rebus is slashed twixt two words or not. As long as it makes sense in both the Across and Down, it's kosher.
Nice fill, easily figureoutable, no OYEs. Thanks for an entertaining SunPuz co-constructors!
Have a great Sunday.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Well, that's not at all how we played I SPY. Ours was "I spy with my little eye, something that begins with -", where that "-" represents a letter of the alphabet. That's all the hint you got.
If you’ve ever been to Colorado Springs, and especially if you’ve stayed at the Broadmoor, you’ve no doubt seen Cheyenne Mountain as a prominent part of the beautiful skyline that is the Colorado Rockies (although, to be fair, it’s outdone by its big brother, Pike’s Peak. There’s a wonderful little zoo along the mountain, the highest in the U.S. (oh, it’s called "Cheyenne Mountain Zoo" for reasons that escape me) and the most arduous place to push two kids in a tandem stroller. But Cheyenne Mountain is best known as the home of NORAD, a place that for decades kept safe the people and equipment needed to fire nuclear ICBMs at the Soviet Union (ah, the good old days!). As someone said, the movie "War Games" largely took place inside Cheyenne Mountain/NORAD ("A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?")
Enjoyed Rex’s write up and pics. Step-brother has likeable sense of humor. Thought puzzle was a fun hunt for the “eye”s. Roaming around the grid, EYELET was the giveaway for me, then OXEYE fell into place and the rest followed. Lots of little edits to things like WoNTON (must have been the Chinese dinner I had the other night) for WANTON and wire for CORD. Never heard of the —FLASK, so learned something there.
Good review.
Not about the puzzle…but if you’ve never been to Los Olivos I highly recommend a day trip. You can walk from one wine tasting room to the next in the 2-3 block downtown. My favorites are Stolpman and Fess Parker. Good food, too.
I have a fuzzy memory of Ehrelenmeyer flasks having a few shout-out moments on Breaking Bad
Absolutely impossible. Had more "words" i've never heard of than any NYTXW I can recall (and I can recall a lot of 'em), and to top it all off when I finished I got neither happy music nor The Message that I had something wrong. Do better, NYT.
Same here @kitshef. I had to soak in what Rex said about the ellipses and how one would play the game. I think that would’ve been beyond my capabilities playing the road trip game at 6!
Thank goodness I know about ox-eye daisies, or I would not have made much progress up front in the NW corner. But I do, so I did. I enjoyed this puzzle; I don't know the Cheyenne Mountain or Erlen Meter, and I don't know what the Japanese yen looks like, but all the crosses allowed me to get those answers. Liked the clue for ZOO (Place with moving exhibits), ENS (Several characters in nonfiction?). Learned the word "chock." Was unsure of the DAP/PHAT combo (thought it could have been DAT/THAT) but got it right. All in all, a fun if not exceptional Sunday puzzle.
So I decided to do the on line NYT version of this after struggling to read tiny print for so long so of course today is a rebus and I have never learned how to enter one and don't plan to start now, thus my completed puzzle has empty spaces where I would have drawn an eye and had some fun. Just my luck.
Caught on at the JAPAPESEYEN/EYELET cross and would have zoomed through the themers if I had known CHEYENNE or ERLENMEYER. Also have never encountered a HONEYEATER, wrong part of the world.
Only totally new proper was KYRA. And my DIY site is youtube. Video instructions for just about anything.
Nice one, AW a CD. I like a Sunday that is neither A Waste of time or a Complete Disaster and thanks for all the fun.
This is the weekend of our local music festival, four acts a day for three days in a park, one stage at one end, one at the other. When an act is over you take your lawn chair to the other end and away you go. We've seen some first-class musicians, it ends at a reasonable hour, and it's all free. If that's not nice, I don't know what is.
Personal note, by favorite so far has been a guy named Buffalo Nichols who plays acoustic blues/slide/bluegrass and has a wonderful voice. Check him out if that's appealing.
Not even 10 am & I'm off to find my typo. Great Rebus! 3D OXEYE was my revealer & I went on from there. Gotta say though that ERLENM(EYE)RFLASK was a WOE as was (EYE) OF NEWT & MRE. But I enjoyed it except that looking for my typo (as usual) in a Sunday grid sucks.
Thank you, Adam & Chandi for an enjoyable rebus.
And Rex, for sharing the photos :)
Pretty easy-medium but the misdirect on DONKEY EARS cost me a couple minutes in the NE
The print edition has taken to doing a terrible terrible thing - printing "tips for today's crossword puzzle" on page 3 of the front section. (They're not tips, they're answers and giveaways.) Anyone actually doing the puzzle would want to avert their eyes, and who else would be remotely interested? I cannot understand the thinking behind this.
I was pleased to see that this Sunday offering had some early resistance, and once I found the EYEs it still had resistance and I needed the dang EYES for figuring out things like CHEYENNE and DONKEYEARS. (I’d temporarily forgotten about Pinocchio growing the ears!)
I can’t figure out if I’m bemused or amused when comments say the puzzle had no or very little “pay-off.” I’m not sure what that means and I guess it’s individual. Maybe it’s a feeling you wasted your time. Funny, because I always kinda feel like I’m wasting time doing a puzzle so I’m not sure I’d recognize if there was a pay-off.
Figured out the theme pretty quickly and filled in a good chunk of the grid on my first pass. DOUBLE YELLOW LINE, ERLENMEYER FLASK, and SMILEY EMOJI came quickly, but the other themers took a ton of crosses because they were all out of my wheelhouse. I don't remember Pinoccio getting DONKEY EARS, but I haven't seen the film since I was a very small child, if ever. I know YEN are JAPANESE but like Rex I never actually use that term. I was expecting the front half of that clue to be a denomination or something.
As often happens with Sundays, the fill killed me. I got most of the puzzle but the NE corner was impenetrable. I finally had to use the reveal button on CHEW and SHANIA before I could complete it. DNF :-(
The PPP chunking around ERLENMEYERFLASK made this puzzle undoable...having never heard of this thing, I had to rely on the crossing clues to suss it out, and they, too turned out, many of them to be PPP: some newswoman, some TV or movie actor...stuff I can only guess at...fie on naticks, fie!
Erlenmeyer Flask is also the title of the first season finale of X-Files.
DNF. I had GAsBAR and LAs at 55A and 42D. I had no idea what Boystown was about and I figured LAs worked as in a sung melody with la-la-la… A good wrong answer, but wrong nonetheles.
Another Old 97's fan? Hooray and hi! 👋
PS - The cluing for 42D was pretty archaic and devious. Did anyone else here think LAY was a fair answer to Ballad?
FYI The Cat Video Fest is a nationwide phenomenon: 200 theaters across the country!
I grew up just north of Santa Barbara (my brother still lives in the area) so I really loved seeing your photos! It brought me back lots of memories :) I’m living in another country now, and am avoiding traveling to the US for the time being, so I will just have to enjoy your photos for now!
After catching on at JAPANESE YEN x EYELET, I enjoyed going on the hunt for the remaining little EYES. Earlier, I'd wondered about OXEYES, but I couldn't make sense of the cross and abandoned the area. Later, seeing CHEYENNE come into view was a rewarding EYE-opener. I also wondered if I'd gone wrong somehow with ERLE...was ERLE Stanley Gardner involved? So, my "oh, my gosh, it's ERLENMEYER FLASK!" moment was the day's highlight (not sure how I know it: chemistry for me was a blur of having no idea what was going on). And I loved that the EYE OF NEWT found its way into the mix. A treat of a Sunday for me.
Where on earth does the EYE go in CHANNEMOUNTAIN? I have OXAS for the unknown daisies, I worked on that section long, long ago before I had the revealer, and I just can't fig--
Aha!!! The EYE goes after the CH!!! CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN!!! Giving me OXEYE (which I have heard of, after all.) And, finally, now I'm done!!!
But so much suffering beforehand. Too much suffering to really be fun. But there's huge pride on finishing. And grudging appreciation for the dense and skillful embedding of EYE. A really good rebus -- just very long and very hard.
I didn't understand the italicized clues at first reading any more than you did. So why didn't I go immediately to the revealer -- which would have eliminated so much initial suffering? Beats me. That's absolutely what a sane person should do in such a situation.
I knew there was an I SPY game played in a car. It may even go back to my own childhood. I didn't know the full title was I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE.
After getting the revealer, the first themer I got was BREYERS ICECREAM/SHUTEYE. Then JAPANESE YEN/EYELET. Then SMILEY EMOJI/EYE OF NEWT. (I remember EYE OF NEWT! Macbeth.)
I worked very hard on this challenging but admirable puzzle. So where's my reward? I think my reward is that I'm finally finished!
I only know ERLENMEYERFLASK as the Season 1 finale of X-Files, a very important episode in the overarching lore of the show.
Fun Fact: the ERLENMEYER FLASK used in Breaking Bad recently sold at auction for $2,240 - though I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who could have gotten it for you cheaper.
Same here. Haven't seen an erlenmeyer flask since high school chemistry class 57 years ago, and I impressed myself by getting it from just a few letters.
PPS -What happened to Patrick Berry? I miss his excellent little puzzles in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. It looks like he has been replaced by someone named Eric Berlin…
Great pix.
Agreed, somewhat sneaky. I got it quickly because somewhere in the back of my mind "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (just the title, not any of the content) still resided.
Church.
Nope, not a clue
And you are rewarded with a clean, ink-free wall! ;-)
Star Gate SG-1 anyone??? One of my favorite shows.
But then again I could watch RDA read the phone book.
It was EYE in both directions.
First answer I got was Erlenmeyer flask....but I was a chemistry major in college, and used them :::constantly:::
He sill has puzzles in The New Yorker, usually mid-week. and they're still great.
i actually just ordered one yesterday on amazon ! weird.
Btw @Nancy, I didn’t get back to looking at comments on yesterday’s blog until this morning. Great letter!
Am I the only one gobsmacked by Rex's immediate unraveling of the theme, just a few seconds in? Yes, he says "I know my five-letter crossword flowers, I do." Except that the answer has four letters. What is amazing (to me) is that in the face of this fact, he still never second-guesses what the flower is, or even whether E-HOW is indeed the answer to 1, he just jams OX(EYE)S in and it works! I think he must have a sixth sense, or perhaps he is just bolder in taking chances in crosswords than I ever expect myself to be.
I didn't know LAY for ballad. I guess that answer was unremarkable for an English professor -- hence MS alias RP didn't remark on it.
A more surprising discovery is that I never knew the true definition of WANTON. I'd always assumed it meant something like "unfettered, unrestrained".
I was momentarily confused by 19D: I wanted to put in "black(eye)" at first, but that would have made two horizontally adjacent (eye)s, the other one being in POP(EYE)S. Did anyone else experience that?
i loved your spinoff !
D’oh @kishef…Um, yeah…it WOULD be easier if tailored for a child…something that goes moo, etc. At least with just the letter you could blurt out, BARN, BILLBOARD, BLUEBIRD!
No, but I had JAPANESE YET until I realized an ET was going to be fiction, not nonfiction.
Sorry if I didn't make it clear, Beezer. "Pay-off" may sound too dramatic. I don't really need flashing lights, sirens, confetti everywhere, and the popping of champagne corks. @SouthSide Johnny likened it to "hard work" with little to show for it. Agreed. And @Nancy said "I worked very hard on this challenging but admirable puzzle. So where's my reward? I think my reward is that I'm finally finished!" That was well said. I guess I just want more than "finally finished" as a reward.
No Christmas in your soul? This year will be the 70th year NORAD out of Cheyenne Mountain has tracked Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Out here in coastal southwestern British Columbia we often travel by ferry and if you're the first or last vehicle to board, your wheels get chocked so that, if there's any kind of "impact incident" you don't get pushed off the boat.
@RP: Nice vacay-pics! Thanx for sharin! Primo weird-ball tree, btw.
I got mixed feelings about this SunPuz rodeo. Humor-wise, it was pretty much a nuthinburger, altho the puztheme revealer was kinda cute.
Solvequest nanoseconds-wise, it was mostly fairly smoooth, altho ERLENMEYERFLASK was a total no-know, and NIKKI & KYRA were no help at all.
staff weeject pick of 30 candidates: EYE. Apologies to all 30 candidates.
Got the EYE rebus early-on, due to havin traveled real near to Ch(eye)nne Mountain, once long ago.
But, but ... I almost mistakenly started up an EAR rebus, at DONK(EYE)ARS. Narrow escape, for the precious nanoseconds.
Fave thing: BREYERSICECREAM, which was much more friendly and tastier than its symmetric(al) themer whatever-FLASK.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Wagner dude & Ms. Deitmer darlin. Definitely a giant 8-eyed beast.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
... This comin week is officially Elvis Week! [And maybe also Rebus Week??] anyhoo ... let us celebrate ...
"Elvis Week" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
@Okanagener. No plans to visit your wonderful valley this summer but we've been enjoying our own little Peachfest with all the wonderful, luscious fruits showing up in the produce aisles over the last few weeks. So good. Thank you, OK farmers for not turning every available acre into vineyards.
Like Rex didn’t know the flask but as a retired airline tech knew chock I’ve chocked many an airliner not so funny story my coworkers in Guam would park a DC-10 on an inclined ramp for maintenance the guy on the ground would literally throw a chock behind the nose wheel the guy in the cockpit would set the breaks except this night the breaks weren’t set? Aircraft jumped the chock rolled backwards through the fence into someone’s house extensive damage to house and aircraft
Had a Maleskan mustiness to it, for sure.
Dish served at a gentleman’s club? WANTON soup.
@Les, there aren't as many tree fruit orchards as there used to be; certainly a lot of acres of peaches and cherries have been replaced with grapes. But not all!
PPPS - The puzzles in the NYT Sunday magazine are mostly good with the exception of Dixo. Dixo sucks…
I am nowhere near the savvy solver that Rex is, but I was confident in ox-eyes because 1) that kind of daisy appears often in the crossword, and 2) I knew 6 Across most likely started with with TAX. So those things made me put it right in, too.
SharonAK
@Rex Loved your photo of the snowy egrets. Have never seen them do anything more active than wade.
Loved the "zoo" clue. Thought of it as clever rather than weird phrasing. Definitely had me thinking in other directions until I had the z.
Having had a chemistry prof parent finally paid off here! I used to have to hang around the lab for an hour or two after school before getting driven home, I learned lots of names of things (no phone to play on back then...)
SharonAK
@ Anon 6:26 I hadn't noticed the eye being an eye in all the downs. Thanks for pointing it out.
And what's with the ANondirectly under you?There is an eye sound in some but there is certainly no eye in Japanese yen or double yellow
I'm glad you mentioned it! I came to the blog specifically to learn what the heck "lay" has to do with a ballad.
Oh, fer chrissake -- another damn gimmick-fest. Balled it up and threw it away as soon as I realized what it was.
Ah. Gotcha!
It's the same reason Fridays & Saturdays are skewing easier: the more people that get hooked on doing the puzzle and playing other games, the more existing all access subscriptions are retained and the more new ones are brought into the fold. On just a dozen years, the NYTimes has shifted from being just a newspaper publisher to being an online marketing behemoth that publishes a newspaper.
I did the same. Though now I have to shell out $2,500 to replace my MacBook with a new one.
Found today a slog, like all silly game puzzles. But I ABIDEd all the unknown proper names and finally finished!....um, with an error. I had entered ERLENMEYER GLASS. SYRA and GRASER made as much sense to me as KYRA and FRASER.
OTOH, because of my advanced age, many of the proper names and other words that flummoxed the youngsters here came quite easily. OMAR, REID, CHOCK, NEUMAN, OATES, AGEE, DAG and other AGE-OLD stuff went in swiftly.
BTW, there ARE other NIKKIs!
I liked the puzzle but have issues with the NSA-whistle blower clue - he wasn't a whistle-blower. He is a person who leaked classified information instead of raising concerns through the appropriate channels
Right, but it *meant* eye in one direction, whereas it was just part of the answer (something spied) in the other direction. Which is what both Rex and the original commenter said.
Pretty Good is a testament to the late, great John Prime?
You’ve never heard of the game “I spy”? Or the tv show or movie of the same name?
If you haven’t heard of the words, it might be you who needs to do better.
I put in Lay with no hesitation.
LAY was clued as "Ballad" earlier this year (on a TUESDAY, if you can believe that), and it upset me so much that I remembered it this time (although whether it was lay or ley had to wait on crosses).
sure was a relief the puzzle was well made it brought back childhood memories
This comment and the reply made my day.
I lived for close to 4 years across the street from one of those clubs. Walked my dog past their front door almost every night and I don't recall ever seeing anyone go in or out. Must've been a secret back door somewhere, maybe with a posted menu featuring that particular soup.
I took the clue little eye to be the “i” character. Of course the rebus didn’t work. I still think my interpretation is better.
I clocked ERLENMEYER FLASK pretty quick but thats only because i love Breaking Bad 😄
ditto all the way!
Yinchiao
I get the dead tree addition.
I always do the puzzle first. Then the blog, then the paper itself Most of the time I forget that page 3 exists and don’t read it. I understand complaints about spoilers, but if someone (who probably doesn’t know about this blog!) wants to look at page 3 after doing the puzzle, I think it performs a service. And those starting out looking for training wheels , to each their own.
I don’t think putting that page 3 column in is a bad thing. On the other hand, making the puzzle too easy is another story.
the frogman et al.
I didn’t get LAY right away but the clue was singular so it couldn’t be an S. Then I remembered LAY which even appeared this year and I am sure many other occasions. Yes it’s crosswordese and but I don’t see it being any worse than all the other crosswordese that appears regularly. I don’t think it’s in any unfair.
Toma eso, perdedor.
I stared at ADJS for at least two minutes wondering what the heck ADJS are. Gnomes? Elves? Dwarves? Do blue guys with beards have another name? Anglican Diode Jumpers? I read this blog early today and no mention. I checked the NYTXW blog, nothing. Two hours later on my way to work ... Adjectives. Ugh.
Had this puzzle done with the little i's and it said nope. So I typed in all the EYEs and it was happy. Overall, the puzzle felt uneven to me. Plenty of clanks on my jolly way.
EHOW was the only permanent struggle. Ended the puzzle where I began because of all the buttons in all the world a HAHA button isn't something I would ever imagine being necessary. A world filled with too many humorless people all staring at a HAHA button asking themselves, "What do I do with that?"
Had fun putting most of this together. Delightful and amusing to meet the Tellum. Don't know how I knew ERLENMEYER FLASK, but I did. Glad honey eater was the word of the day as I'd never heard of them.
😂 [You might get one in a row].
People: 16
Places: 8
Products: 10
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 47 of 140 (34%)
Funny Factor: 7 🙂
Tee-Hee: GAY BAR.
Uniclues:
1 Self-styled gorilla offering a seminar called, "God wants you to succeed."
2 Fancy dance celebrating your eye healing up a month after you thought you were being so funny and so smart when you said that thing to your wife's friend.
1 ABUNDANTEER APE
2 LONG LOST SHINER GALA (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Naughty Bovidae in boots on your lap. TABOO GOGO GOAT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Beezer 10:21 AM
"Funny, because I always kinda feel like I’m wasting time doing a puzzle...." Exactly! I wish I could explain how much this resonates with me. Joyous wasted time.
I spy with my Elder Millennial eye something 90s flavored – War Games, X-Files, Fresh Price of BELAIR, The Little Mermaid, The Mummy, Magnolia, SHANIA, Radiohead. PHAT!
mine too! (i’d love to comment in purple as marie.)
It took me a while to find out that it was a rebus puzzle (I know about OXEYES and OXLIPS, but ETSY sure is a site for a DIYer... so I couldn't see OX[EYE]S) and when I did get it, I had a KEY square in DON[KEY] EARS with the wedge being some kind of KEY. Then I saw the EYEs in CH[EYE]NNE and JAPANES[EYE]N, and my KEY rebus + E became K + [EYE], finally. Only then did I remember the HAWK[EYE] State (I'm not from the US) and I could correct IT'S ODD to HOW ODD. The rest of the solve was a lot smoother.
I'm a math major, and there's a mathematician named John von NEUMANN, two Ns. Another variant!
As a student who really enjoyed science classes in high school, I really enjoyed seeing Erlenmeyer flask. Super fun to see.
I worked for a major international airline for 30 years. A plane was of the blocks when ready to roll.
Found it mostly annoying. Renfaire ? Whoever calls it that. Ballad? Lay really?
90 across should have been loo since it holds moving (bowel) exhibits.
Dixo much to easy.
Nothing much to say except that 1 liter Erlenmeyer flasks make great decanters (2 liter for magnums).
Almost everyone on this blog has more than likely used or seen one of those flasks in their chemistry class at some point in their education, although you probably just called it a flask. Chemistry was one of the subjects you had to take in order to get a diploma when I was in High School. Also had a chemistry set when I was a kid, but can't remember for the life of me if it came with one .
Rex, I've always called it a smiley emoji, and thought it was it's name, but it turns out that it's name actually is: smiling face emoji.
Breyers Ice Cream has turned to absolute garbage since being bought by Unilever. In fact, some flavors can't even be called ice cream anymore. Prior to the buyout they were all natural ingredients. Now the ingredient list looks like a chemistry experiment.
I don't recall the "I spy" game existing when I was a kid, but do recall slug bug, or as others called it punch bug. The first one to spot a VW Beetle got to hit the person next to them in the arm. Me and my brothers hit hard.
Just finishing on Monday so probably the final comment on this fine Sunday puzzle. A few observations:
LAY - only know this is a ballad because of perhaps the worst college song ever, that of my alma mater:
"Hail! Alma Mater, we sing to thy praise,
Great our affection; tho’ feeble our lays
Nesting of peaceful and calm ‘neath the hill
Fondly we love thee our dear old McGill."
Fortunately, having studied Chemistry there, ERLENMEYERFLASK was a gimme once the EYE theme became apparent. Talking of which, didn't we just have the CBS EYE in Saturday's puzzle?
EHOW: Are you serious? Had to be ETSY! Also would have thought BEAU GESTE, BEAU DOMMAGE or BEAU MONDE were better known than BEAU IDÉAL.
DNF due to the ACELAS, GNC, TOSTADOS, KIDA corner. Otherwise a pleasant slog.
I crawl into bed and do the weekend puzzle before falling asleep every night - five night later, I've finally finished this one. Well, I had that flask wrong in three places, though I did know LAY. But I was going for something pLAsm. I drink wine in bed only when I do the weekend puzzles, so I like the puzzles that challenge me for several days, and this was no exception. (I missed typing the first letter of puzzles, and the correction dialog that came up offered me three other _uzzle words, but not puzzles!)
Seeing the photos wasn't the best part of doing the puzzle, but it was right up there.
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