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Stringy parts of oranges / FRI 8-1-25 / Insect that can reproduce with or without mating / Who's ahead and who's not in campaign coverage, so to speak
Friday, August 1, 2025
Constructor: Abigail Martin
Relative difficulty: Easy (8:58)
THEME: Themeless
Word of the Day: IFTAR (Evening meal during Ramadan) —
Iftar is the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims in Ramadan at the time of adhan (call to prayer) of the Maghrib prayer.Iftar is the second meal of the day; during Ramadan, the daily fast begins immediately after the pre-dawn meal of suhur and continues during the daylight hours, ending at sunset with the evening meal of iftar.In 2023, UNESCO added iftar to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
• • •
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| In October 2023, the NYT ran these three grids on three Fridays in a row |
This puzzle was so easy and so fun. Was it... perhaps..... too easy?? I can't tell if the NYT has been making their Friday puzzles easier, or if I've just gotten better at solving. I recall Fridays being hard and Saturdays being very hard. Now it seems that Fridays are as easy as Wednesdays, they just don't have a theme. Curious to see what y'all's thoughts are! And of course, who am I to talk.... I love making easy puzzles.
Let's go ahead and list out all the great long entries: we have STREET FOOD (with an almost-symmetrically placed CARNE ASADA), then SCAM ARTIST. SEAWEED SALAD, SPIDER SENSE, and PHOTOSHOOT (which has an almost-symmetrically placed CAMERA READY), plus STEEPLE CHASE and NEW RELEASE. Then ROSE PETAL, HOT CEREAL, and HORSE RACE. (ACCESS ROAD and LATE APRIL weren't particularly sparkly to me, but perfectly serviceable especially in the presence of the aforementioned great fill.) This is a bonkers high amount, the grid is truly stuffed!
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| I've been having a blast watching Known Crossword Lover Natasha Lyonne in the show "Poker Face"; Season 2 had a great episode about scam artists |
Recently (quite recently! Like in my last ~six months of constructing), I've been thinking more about the clue/entry dynamic:
- You can have a fun entry with a pretty standard, definitional clue (like [Finished with hair and makeup, say] for CAMERA READY)
- You can have a pretty standard entry with a fun wordplay clue (like [Sew what?] for HEM)
- You can have a fun entry with a fun wordplay clue (like [Phish-monger?] for SCAM ARTIST)
- You can have a pretty standard entry with a pretty standard clue (like [Wise ones] for SAGES)
All puzzles are heavy on (4) (just by necessity; puzzles have lots of entries), and this puzzle felt very heavy on (1) as well. The grid was fantastic, but I would have loved to see a little more tricksiness from the clues. I wonder if the editors are saving that for Saturdays!
Bullets:
- [Literally, "grilled meat"] for CARNE ASADA — I paused here when I thought this would be "nyama choma," which also means grilled meat (in Swahili), but realized that was wrong from the crossings
- [Intuitive ability in the Marvel Universe] for SPIDER SENSE — I was ready to go on a rant about how this is called SpideY Sense, but I looked it up and it can be called either. In the Tom Holland movies, they call it the "Peter Tingle"
- [Dad, in Korean] for APPA — I know this from the show "Kim's Convenience." I love when TV makes you smarter!!
- [Insect that can reproduce with or without mating] for APHID — I knew this because today I had to write a crossword clue for this same entry and I read a substantial amount of the Wikipedia page, which included this fact, in order to brainstorm
- [One of the three landlocked countries with four-letter names, aside from Chad and Mali] for LAOS — Fun little geography test here! Did any of you get it by visualizing a map of the world? Or did you wait for the crosses like I did?
P.S. Since the notes below call out the upcoming Lollapuzzoola tournament, I should mention that I am writing one of the puzzles for it! I hope to see you there, and if you're there, I hope you enjoy my puzzle!
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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102 comments:
A nice puzzle, congratulations on your debut, Abigail. I'm a slow solver but I breezed through this quickly. Felt like a Wednesday to me.
Agree, super easy, matched my best Friday time. For jazz aficianados, Jan Garabarek's album I took up the RUNES is worth a listen. Not sure if this will post like Rex does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcIhLvJfeqs&list=RDGcIhLvJfeqs&start_radio=1
Not the toughest Friday, by far. 20 minutes or so is pretty good for a turtle typist like me. There was some good stuff like 10D CAMERAREADY setting up 27D PHOTOSHOOT and 17A SCAMARTIST for phish monger. But there was also a fair helping of dumb stuff like 1A PITHS. “Oh, Abigail, do you think you could trim these citruses a wee bit finer. There are just too, too many PITHS in them”. Uh, uh, just no.
And 22D SPIDERSENSE? Also no. It’s SPIDEySENSE. Really. I’m looking forward to seeing how other commenters feel about this. GetREAL, it’s Spidey.
Never heard of Taurus season but, because my wife was born in early May and she is a force to be reckoned with, I guess she can have her own season. (36A LATEAPRIL)
I’m neither Jewish nor Muslim, or any religion, for that matter so how did I know 40A SEDERS but not 6D IFTAR? Crosswords, I guess.
There were two things that genuinely puzzled me: 21D STEEPLECHASE and 23A PATREON. The first because I don’t closely follow the Olympics and always thought that STEEPLECHASE was an equestrian thing and why would Kenyans be particularly good at horsey sports and, secondly, I associate substacks with Reddit, even though I have hardly ever checked in there. Hoping for some clarification here. Thanks in advance.
Malaika let this one off easy.
Easy for a Friday, because the few unfamiliar words, e.g. IFTAR and PATREON, could be inferred from the crosses. My one brief problem was "seaweed sauce" instead of SEAWEEDSALAD.
A 17 minutes Friday is super fast for me, about 1/4 my usual time, definitely easy. I too wanted SPIDEy SENSE, felt a bit disappointing to put in that R. I did get LAOS without crosses, I've been playing a geography game called Globo lately since Duolingo ruined my favorite learning app with AI-ification
100% agreed, Abigail, that this was a fantastic debut!!!! Great puzzle, agree with Malaika about all the nice long entries, great pairings available at the food truck (CARNEASADA in my STREETFOOD taco)! CAMERAREADY for the PHOTOSHOOT; listening to a NEWRELEASE on my IPOD; Having some HOTCEREAL right after I NAPPED. It was a little easy.... 10:08 for me means this was the easiest Friday so far in 2025; Will and co, I know you are broadening the appeal, but .... let's stop the slide here. Thanks again, Abigail, for a terrific puzzle! : )
Oops, I cleared my cache yesterday and so I was "anonymous="...
Way, way too easy. no hold-ups whatsoever. Sure a few writeovers -STREETmeat, SPIDEySENSE, ACCESSRamp - but all became clear very quickly. The NYbTfeels like it is insulting our intelligence with puzzles like this, although I agree with Malaika that there were some very nice answers.
Easy. I initially wanted rebus squares in two places: [ms]NBC instead of CNBC at 10A and [ge]t REAL instead of BE REAL at 28A.
One Overwrite:
SPIDEy SENSE before SPIDER at 22D
Two WOEs:
IFTAR at 6D
APPA at 26D. I've never seen (or even heard of) Kim's Convenience.
Phish-monger : I spent way too long trying to get something here related to a certain choogly jam-band from Vermont. Especially because for a while I was thinking 3D might be TREY, which would be nice symmetry.
6A : doesn’t INRE mean “in regards to”? Shouldn’t that make the clue “Regarding” inapt?
Interesting write up! Thank you, Malaika. BTW, I've heard "Peter Tingle" in a different context. HAR!
Hi Malaika—what a pleasant Friday surprise! Agreed, the puzzle is easy but fun, or should I say fun but too easy. I enjoy a bit more pushback on a Friday. Today I got that mostly from the Phish-related clue, which had me looking for jam band terms.
And thanks for pointing out the niceties of grid construction. As a solver, I appreciate it when a constructor sheds light on that aspect of designing a puzzle. I’m curious: does a constructor usually choose a grid, then fill it, or think of some marquee entries, then choose a grid that will accommodate them?
Great puzzle, very miscast as a Friday. Broke my time record by a bunch. More like a Tuesday/Wednesday time.
It wasn't hard but it wasn't easy. I measure the difficulty of a puzzle by the number of mysteries it has. I call an entry a mystery if it's not in my data base or, if it is, where the clue doesn't help me find it. I have to guess it from the crosses. Today's had ten mysteries. A Monday or Tuesday has one or two. A hard puzzle has close to twenty.
Hey Friday!
May I please have my back. Thank you!
I’m guessing that there will be a pretty vocal “It’s too easy” contingent today, but for me at least, it was just right. The long entries were well-clued and pleasant to parse together.
No sense complaining about things like IFTAR and APPA - that stuff is what it is, just grateful that I knew CARNE ASADA and APHIDs.
I only knew the STEEPLECHASE races that are for horses. What little I know about track and field comes from an occasional passing interest in the Olympics - but don’t ever recall seeing it there, although of course maybe I just forgot it.
This was so easy that I thought maybe it wasn't Friday at all. But neither was it as tricky as a Thursday. Like Malaika, I decided just to enjoy it.
You’re definitely right, this should have been a Wednesday. Absolutely smashed my personal best
It definitely is SPIDEY SENSE! At least colloquially. But easy to infer and "correct".
As a longtime Marvel Comics nerd I can state unequivocally that it’s Spidey, not Spider. Otherwise great puzzle though probably too easy, my Friday PB (this one) is now faster than my Thursday PB.
Hey All !
Lots of crossing Longs, but yet puz played sort of easy here. Biggest hold-up was NW corner. Figured it'd be FOOD, but never having heard of IFTAR, was reluctant to put it in. And had bREAD for a minute before TREAD. Wanted PeelS, then PulpS, finally PITHS at 1A. With PulpS, 2D was urge.
Already had in HOT CEREAL, and ended up with _EREAL at 28A, thinking "Could it possibly be a CEREAL repeat?" Funny how BE REAL/CEREAL is only that first letter off.
The ole brain curveballed me at the Sea of Tranquility. Wrote in Eden(!), Holy moly! Then Mars, finally MOON. I know it's on the MOON! Silly brain.
BRAVa on a good FriPuz, Abigail. Not too ROUGH, but also not an EASYA. MWAH!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
No, no, no. It is spidey sense. Period.
Peter tingle?! REALLY!?!?!?!
This was a fun puzzle.
Unfortunately I thought that “Korean Dad” was spelled OPPA and got stuck on POPPED for “Was out for a bit” (i.e. Popped out).
Couldn’t find the error in my grid for a while until I realized PAIL didn’t make much sense.
Otherwise a fun and not-too-difficult puzzle.
This one was tough for me because IFTAR and PATREON were complete unknowns and yet overall this was my fastest NYT Friday ever. Were the clues too easy? Not sure—the races that Kenyans excel in are normally called marathons, so STEEPLECHASE was kinda unexpected as an answer but was stored somewhere in my subconscious. HORSERACE also did not seem to fit the clue but was descriptive of the situation involved. Anyway, some fun terminology to play with while drinking coffee on an overcast morning.
I enjoyed this and thought it was pretty easy for a Friday, ending up with a fast time. BUT I did make a number of errors along the way which, happily, slowed me up only briefly.
Starting with 1A: PulpS instead of PITHS. Both answers were awkward, at best, in the plural. Down the eastern seaboard, I had nukED for LASED [Zapped, in a way]. And at 54A, ACCESS Ramp for ACCESS ROAD. That gave me two As in the middle of the landlocked country, which I was pretty sure was LAOS (not from visualizing a map – hi, Malaika! – my mental maps aren’t that detailed, but from figuring that a 4-letter country ending with S is probably crossword favorite LAOS). I also had SPIDEy SENSE, which resulted in the delightful crossing answer, OyLESS. (CLUE: Description of the Yiddish expression “Vey!”)
I got a kick out of BEREAL above CEREAL. WEARE looks odd in the grid, as if it’s an olden-days variant of “wear.” “I think I shall WEARE my surcoat, hose and kirtle.” Back in the days of snail mail, my cousin always used to sign her cards and letters with MWAH. She intended it to simulate a kiss, and was startled to find that one of her correspondents thought it was an acronym for Mailed With A Hug. Loved the column ROSE-PETAL RUNES – hope @Gary Jugert includes it in his UNIs.
Thanks, Abigail Martin, it was fun!
Back to a themeless early mid-week puzzle for Friday.
I guess it sells more subscriptions.
I agree that both Fridays and Saturdays have become much easier. I find this disappointing. The best Saturday puzzle now is the Newsday.
I liked the clue on RUNES as “medieval characters,” but maybe I haven’t been in the crossworld long enough to have seen it before so it tricked me for a bit. I know there was already a Shakespeare clue, but nevertheless I entered TO DREAM for “there’s the rub,” which happened to fit. Lovely write-up, Malaika!
Super easy Friday for me. No rewrites of consequence and done in under 15 min on public transportation
I also thought this was easy for a Friday. But overall a fun one. I also thought it was SPIDEY SENSE at first, glad to hear that it can also be SPIDER SENSE. Is PITHS a valid plural? Kind of don’t think so but it’s a minor issue.
It's not just you, Malaika. This was ridiculously easy. I did it in Tuesday time. What little resistance there might have been was easily swept aside by crosses. 5:33 for me, and not even hustling.
Malaika's enthusiasm about the layout and the strong set of long entries is well-founded. However, the problem with this puzzle is that it was so EASYAnd stress-free that I whooshed through it with such speed as to never really even notice the grid quality. That's ultimately down to the editors. Please, NYT -- give these puzzles more resistance.
Randomocity:
-- Great pairings: CAMERAREADY PHOTOSHOOT, CARNEASADA STREETFOOD, BRAVO NEWRELEASE (yet another Andy COHEN show?), IFTAR & SEDERS.
-- Enjoyed BEREAL just above CEREAL and APHID crossing SPIDER
-- Four-letter Asia-fest: APPA, LAOS, Taiwan-based ACER. Want more? How about TEAS and Reverend MOON.
-- Admittedly a stretch, but almost a two-fer for Steely Dan: PEG, from the album after The Royal SCAM[ARTIST]. Never mind.
-- Errata: asto >> INRE, and wAIL >> NAIL (although I now realize I was thinking of "whale").
-- Do digitized ORCAs travel in IPODS?
Easy Friday with two exceptions - STEEPLECHASE and PATEON. I had no idea what either was. I enjoyed the puzzle except for SPIDER SENSE. As others have pointed out, it is SPIDEy Sense. I can't believe they let that pass.
Malaika did mention that she was gonna do a rant and found it could be SPIDER. But yes, that and PATREON held me up. Doesn’t Reddit have subreddits? (Maybe those are “substacks”) At any rate, I thought substack was computer terminology and not the brand name for a monetization tool.
Steeplechase is a 3000 meter contest in track and field which includes water hurdles and water hazards.
Another very easy Friday. Really not sure what the editors are trying to do with Fridays. They started that thing where they release two sets of clues - regular and easy - and then the make the 'regular' clues easy.
I like the B EREAL / C EREAL combo at 28A and 30A. Shame we could not have worked in 'sidereal' or similar to go with them.
@Spyguy - I resisted IN RE for a long time for that very reason.
Surprised at the strong 'spidey sense' lobby today. Admittedly it has been a few decades since my comic-reading heyday, but it was always 'spider sense'. Perhaps jocularly referred to as 'spidey sense' occasionally, in the same way Superman might sometimes be referred to as 'Supes'.
Fridays and Saturdays have gotten substantially easier. Look at the cluing for BORIS and NOIR here, for example. The NOIRs are the most obvious examples of the genre and the BORIS is one the most famous ones (especially to long time solvers).
Going to let my boomer show. PATRE?N crossing BRAV(O/A) is a Natick.
Malaika, great write-up!! (Auto-correct just changed your name to malaria, I apologize on its behalf). Either we all got better simultaneously, or the puzzle is getting easier; even the NYer got easier.
When howcatchem came up last week, I referenced Poker Face and will put that out there again to second you. While on TV shows, Rhea Perlman has been showing up in my TV viewing like Oreos in xwords. “Too Much”, mentioned by RP, also has her in the promising pilot.
APHIDS have also been crawling around a lot lately, making their honeydew, and mating by themselves.
I finished with PATREON, a no-know that I’ll probably see everywhere soon. (Looks it up). I see, a way to monetize talking into your phone in selfie mode. TV news used to be full of showing tweets on the screen, now it regularly has self-appointed talking heads. Glad I quit watching a long time ago, although it does leave me not knowing about things like patreon.
I resisted SEAWEEDSALAD, because it seems like more of a dish unto itself than a topping, but it eventually insisted.
Malaika, I thought of LAOS instantly (had S at the end), but thought that on a small corner of Asia, all the countries must have shoreline. Now if I could just remember their currency from a few days ago…oh yeah, the Laotian Kip.
Joining team "God no, It's Always SPIDEy!" That gave me a full-body-and-soul cringe. This was otherwise an absolute treat to solve!
Malaika, I share your uncertainty about whether the puzzles are getting easier or I'm getting better at them. I also found this one very, VERY easy for a Friday, where I'm generally hoping to be diverted for at least 10 minutes. Today I was not!
What a great counterpart to Sealed With A Kiss
Very easy! I almost never get a Friday without running check puzzle but I got down to just two boxes I couldn’t figure out because I thought “Appa” was “Oppa” and so couldn’t figure out the across even though once I saw “napped,” it was it was obvious. That’s on me trying to do the crossword before my coffee has kicked in. :)
But it was a fun one to fill out!
You gave me a chuckle with your PHISH comment. Kind of interesting that the band had the name before its use as Internet scamming. At least I THINK so!
Stared long and hard trying to figure out what OYLESS was. Sorry, SPIDERSENSE is an epic fail.
Better to BEREAL than to be HOTCEREAL.
I went to dinner recently with my nieces, Ady and Ada. Ady asked me why my steak was so red in the middle. "It CAMERAREADY, but they did SEAR it" I replied. I actually prefer my CARNEASADA got hers, medium.
For 24A the editors probably wondered clue-wise whether to use an [Hour, in Italy] ORA [Rita].
The vision motivating the development of vaping: IFTAR we're gone....
Thanks and BRAVO on your debut, Abigail Martin.
Yes, the puzzle was easy for a Friday. But, I think that for a lot of the reasons Malaika discussed, it just seemed to have a lot of personality and zing and THAT made it a very fun Friday offering. And I learned about PATREON and Substack (and also what Mailchimp DOES although I’d heard of that). A very impressive debut puzzle!
Yeah, not gonna lose sleep over it, but anyone who read the SpiderMan comic books will only think of Spidey. I mean, it became a bit of a catch phrase for some IRL. One of the things that made Spider-Man different (autocorrect keeps hyphenating) was that he was funny. I didn’t know of or read Deadpool as a kid but very similar in terms of humor.
Having to change the Y in SPIDEY SENSE to an R ruined the whole puzzle for me. I was so happy to see SPIDEY SENSE, so losing that just dashed my spirits as well as my opinion of the puzzle.
"themeless wednesdays" is a great description of what's happening to fridays (and most saturdays).
And over here sliced papaya has the same number of letters as SEAWEED SALAD.
I didn't write it in, but my first impulse in the NW was PULPS leading to URGE. When I couldn't make them work with THY or TRAY, I realized it was PITHS leading to ITCH.
I'm careful writing in long answers on Fridays, but everything came in just as I would have imagined. STREET FOOD -- check. SCAM ARTIST -- check. Nothing surprising, but I had a lovely sense of everything meshing together effortlessly. I thought the Marvel Universe clue was SPIDEy SENSE, whatever that is, but I changed it to SPIDER SENSE, whatever that is.
Would 51D be DOG, CAT or TOT? For me, it would be a DOG, definitely a DOG. I'm a DOG person. But a sleeping CAT is nice too.
A very, very smooth grid and an enjoyable solve.
Que el diablo se lleve tu alma.
Pleasant enough. I learned the words PITH and IFTAR . I read up on APHIDS and they're fascinating creatures.
I've always heard it as SPIDEY SENSE, but SPIDER SENSE works for creating conversation.
❤️ Phish-monger.
People: 6
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 70 (29%)
Funnyisms: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: RACY.
Uniclues:
1 Flying tacos.
2 Kiss thrown by a politician.
3 Breakfast with a bug.
4 Spa treatment with STP additive.
5 Orb I hope isn't made of cheese in heaven.
6 What happened to the cow who didn't jump high enough.
7 Mrs. It in Guarromán.
1 AEROSTREET FOOD (~)
2 SCAM ARTIST MWAH
3 APHID HOT CEREAL
4 RACY MASSAGE (~)
5 CARNE ASADA MOON (~)
6 MOON CARNE ASADA
7 SRA. CAMERA READY (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Celebrate local ankle biter. HAIL AREA MIDGE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Substack is the publishing platform used most by independent journalists to manage subscriptions from their readers. Patreon is a similar product for getting donations and subscriptions from readers and podcast listeners.
One window over on your browser, you can ask for references for Spider-sense and spidey-sense and see that not only are both legitimate, but spider-sense is the official term. I guess that is not as much fun as acting like Fred Sanford with the big one and declaring epic fail.
Steeplechase is also a HORSERACE, echoing streetfood/carneasada and cameraready/photoshoot sorta symmetry/theme
I also had OYLESS at first -- but it never occurred to me to immortalize it with such a funny clue.
Fine puzzle - for a Wednesday! I can understand that hitting the sweet spot of providing a satisfying challenge or tickle to the funny bone for every solver is impossible in one puzzle. That’s why the difficulty is supposed to increase over the course of the week. I don’t subscribe to the NYTXW for word search level difficulty. Nor am I satisfied with fill-in -the- blank early week puzzles. I so look forward to late week, and they have been a disappointment for Months!
Thursdays should have a tricky twist. I look for Fridays to provide cluing challenges, and Saturdays to occasionally stump me. That’s where the satisfaction and pleasure of discovery and success arise. They are the whole point, for me. This has not been the case since Will's return.
Are they using A.I. for clue-writing? That might explain the absence of wordplay and humor. I don’t get it. If it’s about making money they have other games on the app. Why drive off the crossword diehards?
PITHS!!??? Not a good choice for your first clue. But the puzzle improved from there. I did struggle with ACCESS Ramp before ROAD--a better answer, an access road is a short road leading to a bunch of motels and gas stations near the exit ramp from a big higway; the ramp is what you use to get back on. But close enough, and the crosses were easy enough, except for (in my case) the R&B/pop singer.
I liked BEREAL just above CEREAL. If only there's been 'maDEREAL' just below it (but that would have been a dupe).
Hardest part was choosing between SCAM and SpAM artist.
Substack is a platform for both bloglike posts and videos. People can subscribe to your feed, and you can offer paid subscriptions to those who want them.
I think the human steeplechase was modeled on the equestrian one.
@Barbara S. 7:59 AM
Teeny tiny Norse love notes? ROSE PETAL RUNES
I stared at it for awhile and gave up. Glad you made me try again.
@Les S. More 2:31 AM
Patreon and Substack are similar platforms for monitizing a fan base. Typically your followers pay a fee to gain access to your "good stuff."
Reddit has subreddits where millennials vote on who is right and who is funny. Turns out it's none of them. 😉
Easy even though I got off to a slow start in the NW with urge before ITCH and switched to solving from the bottom up. That tactic went much more smoothly.
I did not know ODAY and IFTAR.
Costly erasures - taG before PEG, tASED before LASEF, and asto before INRE.
Low on junk, high on sparkle, liked it a bunch!!
@Coprophagist 5:49 AM
Oh, don't let anybody insult your intelligence. God gave you a great starter kit, and you've been working on it for so long you should be proud.
I threw in SPIDEySENSE like everyone else but reserved the mental note that it could be SPIDER, and the SENSEless OyL for 39A resolved that issue.
Besides that and being on an ACCESS Ramp, this was a breeze. Maybe a personal record? Yes, I miss the Friday challenge of a hard themeless.
@Barbara S., Mailed With A Hug made me laugh!
Nice puzzle, Abigail Martin.
It really depends on if your theme revolves around the grid shape or not. If it does, start with the grid and fill in the entries from there. If it’s more focused on theme/marquee entries, pick a grid that accommodates your answers first, then go from there.
That's the joke.
Also pairing of STEEPLECHASE and HORSERACE, I imagine it's more often thought of as equestrian than olympian
@Beezer, You're right. I was very confused regarding subreddit/substack. And thanks, Anon 9:15 for the steeplechase info but I don't think I'll be able to shake the image of the horsey version.
An easy Friday with the exception of IFTAR, PATREON & PITHS as an opening word was weird for me. Congratulations on your debut,
Abigail :)
Another nice Wednesday puzzle. Too easy
Forget about SPIDER vs SPIDEY… Am the only one who thinks it’s “TASED” and not “LASED”?
@Malaika darlin: M&A also highly recommends FriPuzgrids with the Jaws of Themelessness in em.
Nice, friendly solvequest. No complaints, except...
SPIDEYSENSE. Shoulda gone with it. OYLESS would be no problemo, as it could be clued as: {Opposite of no vey??}.
staff weeject pick [of 9 choices]: HEM. Admired its punny-shing clue, as evidently @Malaika did.
Thanx, Ms. Martin darlin. Nice job. And congratz of yer debut.
Masked & Anonymo1U [s]
... How'bout 4 more themeless rodeos? ...
"Wee Wee Wee Wee" - 7x7 multi-tasker runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
You all who have been doing this for a long time seem to fill so much faster than I do, even when it's on the easier side. One theme I have noticed from the puzzles that Rex and others have pronounced easy is a kind of certainty around what seem to me to be ambiguous clues. E.g. today, I filled URGE at 2D and WEARE and 20A early on, but neither with much confidence. Because of 2D being wrong, I then wanted 17A to be __GUITARIST and also considered BENORJERRY. All of this takes processing time. But then I ran down the right side of the puzzle and back up the left before without much resistance before coming back to the top left before puzzling out the top left with ITCH and TRAY. I also wonder if there's a kind of vernacular that people who have been doing this a long time take for granted.
E.g. 4D--this doesn't land with me as particularly clever, because "HEM" and "so what" don't have much logical relationship. Neither if one reads the clue literally is "hem" a satisfying answer. I would guess that you faster solvers devote almost no thought to this kind of thing, and just know in a limbic kind of way what the answer is.
Unequivocally SpideySense, no question, was happy for an easier Friday after the last few
EASY A -- TADA!
FYI: APPA (DAD) and AMMA (MOM) are used in South India. I think it's interesting how many languages use the "P" sound for fathers — Papa, Pappa Père, etc., and the "M" sound for mothers — Mom, Mamma, Mère, etc.
Malaika, I loved your grid insights from a constructor's viewpoint.
Yes this was relatively fast for a Friday, but a few Unknowns which I skipped over and thought: crosses, help me out here! PITHS IFTAR APPA COHEN PATREON and that's only the top half.
I had ACHE at 2 down and that mucked things up there until I ran into ACHED at 44 across and got wise.
Hands up for really wanting SPIDEY. Sure, SPIDER is technically okay but so dull.
And to @Gary and @jberg, thanks also.
@Gary. Love it!
We thought it was a fine puzzle. Well done! But we are chagrined at having been brought back in time to Tuesday or Wednesday and having to face three or four more workdays before reaching the weekend - and all without benefit of the usual mid-week fun theme to make the workweek bearable. And we do miss seeing our friend Joe F.
I put tASED first also. However, lasers also zap, so I changed it when the cross didn’t work at the T.
@Anonymous 10:51 AM
Based on reading this blog for years, I think your concern is shared among a few, but:
1. Crossword diehards aren't going anywhere. They show up here to complain it's too easy, but they'll keep coming back for more.
2. For every diehard that does wander off, the puzzle probably gains dozens of newer solvers, so the math is clear. Bigger audience = more money. You'd make the same decision if you were responsible for results.
3. Diehards have plenty of other venues to get tough puzzles, but there's obviously something satisfying about coming here and pronouncing this puzzle is too easy. Ego perhaps?
4. And as for AI writing your puzzles, it's a bit of a stretch. Perhaps, the team at puzzle-central just aren't very funny people. I count what is funny or likely to have been meant humorously every day and it's rare to have a really jocular offering. It's just not their thing.
I enjoyed this puzzle, though some will probably say it was too easy for a Friday. No real stumbling blocks; I didn't know PATREON or IFTAR, but that's where you hope the crosses will come through for you, and they did. I had STEEP TERRAIN before STEEPLE CHASE...should HAVE REALIZED THAT'S NOT AN "EVENT." That hung me up for a little while. Nice that there was a steeplechase and a horse race, though. All in all, a pleasant way to start a Friday.
Never heard anything except "Spidey Sense." Been reading Spider Man since the 60s.
I like that measurement!
I fell for the band Phish problem as well… I know they’re famous for long jams, so I figured that they must SCAt during those jams. Left me with HEt, but I’m no seamster so for all I know a HEt is the name of the doohickey that the bobbin sits on in a sewing machine. Fun puzzle even with that gotcha in there.
The first entry reminded me of an ancient family story about my grandparents: they were sitting at the table at breakfast. Grandma: “This orange is very pithy.”Grandpa: “yep, it just pithed right in my eye.” TADA.
I don’t think there’s any question the puzzles are getting easier. One assumes to sell more subscriptions.
Fun, but sooooo easy for a Friday
Can anyone explain how Riser’s partner is TREAD? I’m drawing a blank.
Parts of a stair - tread the part you step on; riser the vertical piece
same question; had bREAD for quite some time
Agree about INRE, that seems like a violation to me and I actually left it unfilled for a long time cuz I couldn’t believe they would do that.
@Kenny, when you are building stairs you have risers, the vertical parts, and treads, the flat, horizontal parts you step on.
Anonymous 10:24AM
Good catch. 3 sets of parallel answers.
Way late tonight so this is probably a message in a bottle, away for an overnight in Burlington VT (home of Phish, serious misdirect) but back at last with my very old and pat-starved cat next to me, as he is down from the dining room table, which he climbs on when he needs serious attention, and augered in next to me in the recliner. A happy cat is a happy owner.
Enough exposition. I found this to be a very nice Fridecito, learned IFTAR and PATREON, and everything else was smooth sailing. Except for CARNEASADA. Lile Malaika, I first thought of Swahili, and then Farsi and Urdu, before settling on Spanish, which was a major doh! from a retired Spanish teacher. Asi es la vida.
Congrats on a fine debut, AM. Clearly A Milestone for you and thanks for all the fun.
Spy guy and Idj5000
FWIW Shortz has no rule against dupes People complain on the blog but they happen frequently in the Times puzzles. So don’t reject an answer because it may be a dupe.
BTW the RE in in re and the RE in Regard are not related
Personally dupes don’t bother me much but I think it’s a stretch to call these 2 dupes when they have different origins.
Imsdave
I am a Boomer also but I knew PATREON.
But the crossing word is almost always BRAVO in English so an a is highly unlikely. This couldn’t be a natick
Elon
The Sew/HEM type clue answer
I have been doing the Times puzzle for about 50 year.
I haven’t noticed this type until fairly recently. They seem to appear more and more often though. Don’t particularly like them. But usually I don’t find them difficult. This one fit the very easy tone of the puzzle.
Late solve for me, anyone out there?? Liked this for all the reasons Malaika mentioned. Only a couple of Holdups - Had Tag for 37D instead of the correct PEG and threw down Seers instead of the correct SAGES for 40D. The latter lasted a long time until ROUGH clicked and the G let it fall, which gave me all I needed for CARNEASADA. So for a few minutes the SE looked pretty choppy for me. But good times all around.
Stellar Debut Abigail - keep them coming!
“In re” is Latin, with “re” meaning literally “thing,” in context “the matter,” with “of” understood. Translates as “in the matter of.” So no relation to regards, no dupe. (Ablative also gives us the dreaded “rebus,” “by means of the thing.”)
Loved this puzzle! Cute word crosses
And fill
Perfect for
Friday!
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