.png)
Hobbled, in gamer slang / WED 10-15-25 / Llama's head? / Tidbit popular in Thai cuisine / Lead-up to a ski jump / Like some briskets and pork ribs, informally / General Motors subsidiary / Sister network of Paramount+, for short
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Constructor: Nick Offerman and Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- QUITE A BIT (17A: Really spectacular drill component?)
- JIGGETY JIG (24A: Lively kind of saw for cutting intricate shapes?)
- BOSS LEVEL (36A: Truly awesome implement for ensuring stability?)
- MODEL PLANE (50A: Ideal instrument for shaping wood surfaces?)
: jerky, unsteady (merriam webster dot com)
• • •
As for the theme, I have only one question. What (the hell) is JIGGETY? Like, as an adjective? I did look it up, as you can see (Word of the Day, above), but "lively?" Do you really describe anything lively as "jiggety"? I know the word ("word"?) JIGGETY from precisely one context: "... home again, home again, JIGGETY JIG," which is what today's answer is referring to (presumably), but the idea of JIGGETY acting as a real word, modifying anything, let alone a JIG, seems preposterous to me. Unless JIGGETY is Gen Alpha slang, in which case I'll defer to the 12yo linguists among you. This answer feels like an outlier not just because JIGGETY doesn't mean anything to me, but because whatever it means, it doesn't appear to mean the same thing that "MODEL" and "BOSS" mean. All the other theme answers are clued as if they express admiration for the tool in question. Is JIGGETY a term of praise? "Those are some JIGGETY shoes you got there." "He's a real JIGGETY dancer." I've heard of "hot diggety!" (sp.!?). I've not heard of JIGGETY anything (except JIG, as we've established).
I loved the revealer ("WHAT A TOOL!"), which was the easiest themer of the lot. By the time I got down there, it was clear that TOOLs were involved. Nice, lively (jiggety?) way to bring the whole theme together. I thought the fill was pretty jiggety as well, in general. The inventive spellings on BBQED and WWIIVET threw me, but they're fun. CRAFT BEERS and FRONT LINES and THE TUBE and ALT TEXT all add spark. Lots of names today, all of which I was lucky enough to know. I realized just now, typing that last sentence, that I was confusing LORD JIM with LUCKY JIM (the Kingsley Amis novel). The clue even clearly says "Joseph Conrad novel," so I don't know why my brain insisted on changing it, but it did (11D: Joseph Conrad novel made into a 1965 film starring Peter O'Toole). I've heard of LORD JIM, but I have not read (or seen) it. I was surprised that the SEDARIS clue didn't even give you "David" as a helper (41D: Humorist who describes his stint working as a Macy's Christmas elf in "Santaland Diaries"). Even people who know David SEDARIS could probably have benefited from the push. And anyway, there's more than one humorist named SEDARIS, although I guess the "his" in the clue does make clear(er) which one we're dealing with (in a weird coincidence, his sister Amy was namechecked in an episode of Somebody Somewhere that I watched just last night).
Bullet points:
- 4A: Sign of justice (LIBRA) — a timely answer. My wife is a LIBRA. Her birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday month, LIBRAs!
- 14A: Acknowledgment of applause, maybe (BOW) — my acknoweldger was much more modest. She merely NODded.
- 34A: Noted chairman? (EAMES) — I thought the EAMES chairs were designed by Charles and Ray EAMES. He would still be the chair man (or "chairman?") but I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that there's also a chair woman.
- 21A: Hobbled, in gamer slang (NERFED) — outside my field of knowledge, but I've heard of it. This is the second bit of gamer terminology in the puzzle, after BOSS LEVEL (a level of video game play where you confront a significant enemy).
- 67A: Cerulean expanse (SKY) — me, a genius: "Ooh, 'cerulean' is blue, so ... SEA!" ("cerulean" is literally SKY blue)
- 33D: Llama's head? (ELS) — "letteral" clues can be tricky in general, but this one was extra tricky since "head," which usually means "first letter," here means "first two letters." Since the head (first letter) is "L" and ELL is how you spell "L" and ELL fit, I wrote in ELL.
- 35D: Description of an online image (ALT TEXT) — I add ALT TEXT to every image I post on social media and I still didn't get this answer easily. Nothing about the clue suggests the fact that ALT TEXT exists primarily to make digital content accessible to people with visual impairments (although you can also think of it as a way to add bonus commentary to your posted pics).
This was tough but fun. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Save And Share :
136 comments:
What a Wednesday. Some really fun puzzling mixed with absolute nightmare fuel.
ELIHU who??? EAMES who????? IBSEN who???????? The SEDARIS clue meant nothing to me; the name just fit.
Calling ANTEGG “popular” is ridiculous. I have traveled a lot of Thailand on and off the beaten path and never once saw ant eggs. I ate a variety of bugs and fruits and fermented goodies and not once did I come across this, nor have I ever heard of it from my SEA friends.
Lockup = POKEY, what?
I only knew Heart of Darkness, sorry LORDJIM.
JIGGETYJIG is quite the weak point in what was otherwise a very fun theme.
I love Nick Offerman so, so much. "Parks & Rec", "Making It", and "The Great North" are ALL among my absolute favorite TV shows (RIP to each). I also love that the theme is tools, because that's Nick Offerman for you.
But I very much disliked this puzzle. Incredibly difficult a Wednesday due to some Friday-level clues, some bad fill, and a lot of old-timey-ness. Even though I got WWIIVET rather quickly, I thought to myself, "That's a bad Scrabble rack, not a crossword answer."
I think UFOs are a frequent subject of *conspiracy theories* not of *conspiracies*
Challenging. I lost my (admittedly modest) streak on a Wednesday! I had ArT TEXT at 35D and it looked fine to me. At 36A I had BOSS LEVEr. I figured a lever could add stability in some situations. Boo on me!
Hard for a Wednesday. ALT TEXT, ELS, EAMES (never heard of the chair) were brutal. Not complaining, but wow - took me longer than last Friday’s.
Oof… this was very difficult for me and frankly, not enjoyable. The difficulty to pay-off ratio was way off. Too many names I had never heard of, and I could not care less about tools.
That being said, I do love Nick Offerman and was pleasantly surprised to see his name in the Info!
Needed a cheat to get ANTEGG, and having gotten it, I will never again visit a Thai restaurant. I guess BRB stands for "Be right back," but it should have been clued as modern shorthand (IMO). Clever theme idea that could have been executed better.
Nick's puzzle notes at WordPlay are OMG priceless. Go and read them right now!
The episode of "The Last of Us" Offerman stars in is an absolute masterpiece of TV storytelling. It's basically a standalone and one you don't really need to see the rest of the show to understand or appreciate (basically just understand "zombie apocalypse" and you're more or less good to go). Just an emotional roller coaster and a phenomenal episode.
So, so glad to know I wasn't alone in struggling a bit with this one. A little vague, a little esoteric. It was a nice challenge for a Wednesday.
THought34A "noted chairman" was one of the fun clues. I've been familiar with Eames chairs for decades and I could swear we had an Eames chair reference in a puzzle very recently..
Understand the objections to jiggety jig, but doesn't it just sound fun?
Hadn't known cerulean was literally sky blue. Reminded me of "The House on the Cerulean Sea" Loved the title for the clear, bright blue sea it conjured in my mind. The book did not disappoint. Had never heard of alt text.
Only really know Offerman from my kids watching the 21 Jump St movies. The carpenter slant is neat I guess but not exactly beneficial to the overall fill. The letter string mashup in the starting corner is unforgivable.
UFO
Liked BOSS LEVEL and the revealer was cool. SAVIORS, FRONTLINES, LORD JIM all top notch entries. Keep the baked in redundancy of THE TUBE and CRAFT BEER and the inane IN A - BRB pair. Our pal @LMS would be happy to see SEDARIS front and center.
To market, to market to buy a fat pig,
home again, home again jiggety jig…
I love the acting work of Nick Offerman.
But not, apparently, the crossword work. I don't think of the BIT as a tool, but an accessory to the drill, which is a tool. And JIGGETY JIG doesn't work in a couple of ways. The JIG is not the tool, the JIGSAW is the tool. Moving the 'saw' part to the clue makes the revealer not work. And JIGGETY does not mean 'lively', in an context I know of.
Thank you, Rex, for teaching me that Ray Eames was a woman. I had no idea! I’d assumed it was like a Gershwin brothers situation. (I use them as my specific example because as a child I assumed Ira was a woman’s name.)
It could be the fact that I spent more time on three clues than the rest of the puzzle combined, but I did not like this. The issue for me was the conjunction of ANTEGG, JIGGETYJIG, and GOB. Jiggety is not on par with the other adjectives and doesn’t really fit the theme. ANTEGG is incredibly obscure. And GOB, as Merriam-Webster notes, usually appears in the plural when it means “large amount.” The other stuff was meh, but this trio was egregious.
Addendum: Having read the constructor's notes, it appears I really should be holding Christina Iverson responsible for any shortcomings. Also: HOG.
Two days in a row now where the wheelhouse / wavelength effect just wasn’t functioning for me. Unfortunately, not much of this made any sense to me. No clue what a JIGGETY JIG is, ditto for ELIHU. I vaguely recognize EAMES as the chair guy, no clue on SEDARIS, IBSEN, ALT TEXT or the movie from the Johnson Administration, and the band plays on . . .
Wondering aloud if all of this was necessary to support the theme entries - if so, it wasn’t worth it in my opinion. Oh well, off to consult with Uncle Google to see if TURTLEs are a generic type of candy, or just another NYT product-placement.
A lively word-playing fun theme, a revealer that brings a “Hah!”, the magnificent JIGGETY, its abutting splendid NERFED, another tool (AWL) in the box to echo the theme, and as icing, Nick’s fabulous frenetic notes – what a GAS!
When the outing goes beyond being a satisfying fill-in and brings joy into the equation, when it jumps from being not only clever, but entertaining as well, it’s one of those moments where I’m not joining a standing-O because everyone else is doing it, rather, it’s one of those moments where I’m the first to rise and begin the standing-O.
Brava and bravo, Nick and Christina! You took me from neutral to vroom, from chill to jiggety, and set me bounding into my day. Thank you so much for this, and encore!
[Exemplary utensil for getting the angle right?]
PERFECT SQUARE
Indeed, in the world of tools, a jig is NOT a jig saw, but rather it is a device made to hold a tool, or guide material through a tool. Jigs and jigsaws are two very different things.
I did, Lewis, and you’re right!
This puzzle was strangely on my wavelength, despite my incompetence with any and all tools. A great mix of Christina’s expertise and Nick’s fresh outsider perspective. I also appreciated the balance of old-timey language and more up-to-date gamer speak, ALT TEXT, and whatnot. Kudos!
Oh relax. It's not like they're sneaking ant eggs into your chicken curry...
I had a different experience from a lot of other folks. I found this pretty easy, but annoying. I groaned at many of the clues, but was able to see them.
It took me a little longer than it should have for amigas instead of novias (girl friends vs girlfriends)
Hey All !
Rex surprises me again. I thought he'd go on a 12 paragraph rant about the NW corner. Something along the lines of, "Two initialisms? If you need BBQED and WWIIVET to complete the corner, you need to tear it all out and start over". Or something. But, he liked it! Hey Mikey! 😁
Neat Theme idea. TOOLs described with synonyms for great. I'm sure I'm describing that wrong!
There is a note above the puz today at nyt.com. It says, "More information about the making of today's puzzle appears in the Times' daily crossword column". Is this going to be a new thing going forward? Or is it just something that describes how today's puz came about?
ANT EGGs do not sound appetizing. How do even get them? Gives an Ant Farm a whole new meaning. I don't think people are going into the wild to find ANT EGGs.
Anyway, hope y'all have a great Wednesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
WHAT A TOOL 😂
The clue for quite a bit asked for a component. A bit is a component of a drill.
I really hated this puzzle. I also could not actually finish it. Super-vague clues and things I didn’t know and had no hope of coming up with (EAMES chairs for ex.)
Also, what is NETFUL? That isn’t a word. And it’s not a word that means a net full of fish, that would be NETFULL.
Jiggety jig seems a bit higgledy-piggledy, but all in good fun. Cromulent enough for me.
I had trouble with the antegg answer. I don't understand the fascination of some of the commentators about who the constructors are. An excellent puzzle should stand on its own. I didn't read the comments of the constructors.
Love it!
Did not enjoy the puzzle, which was filled with awkward answers and forced clueing. Got the theme just from seeing the constructor name and assumed it would be the hobby that is always talked about. Don’t appreciate the special look at the note! We have a real life celebrity here! Just lame. Putting out bad puzzles from celebrities and overlooking the plethora of great constructors out there seems really misguided.
Had a fairly easy time with this! What’s wrong with with me?
Last word filled was “eames”. No one in my world would know this.
Well, it is a word; you can look it up. The AI Overview that invariably pops up says it means "as much as a net can hold". (It's not a word in my personal lexicon, either, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.) "Netfull" doesn't seem to be a word.
one of the greatest harness trotting horses in history was Jiggy Jog S, fwiw. retired in 2024
Thanks to Anonymous (7:25) for reminding me of where I had seen JIGGETY before.
Mexicans eat ant eggs? Each one is about the size of a period, like this (.), I read. They fry them in butter and consume them by the thousands.
Neat new word in my vocabulary. NERFED. Will and the gang nerf when the put out a Monday crossword.
Seconding the above recommendation of The House in the Cerulean Sea! I love everything TJ Klune writes, but this one is his best (that I've read so far). I'm glad I never saw that clue, or I would have confidently entered "sea."
Having played old Nintendo games around the globe, some consider me a World WIIVET.
Mrs Egs and I went as a chicken couple last Halloween. I went as rooster, she went ASHEN. I still don't know what made her visibly afraid. This year she's going as a TURTLE.
A single ANTEGG isn't much of a tidbit. But I can kinda imagine The Bear putting one ANTEGG on a sturgeon egg as an appy in his quest for a Michelin star.
Quiz question in a Mexican girls' school chemistry class: I'm noble. AMIGAS?
I hope that the GOB of commentators complaining about today's difficulty are not the same GOB as the ones who complain daily about the puzzles getting too easy. I also found it remarkably head scratching that @Rex supplies a dictionary definition of JIGGETY (Jerky, unsteady) near the top of his review and then, half way through it he slams the puzzle with "As for the theme, I have only one question. What (the hell) is JIGGETY?". I mean, c'mon. Either you (@Rex) are tripping or I am. What a bizarre way to criticize a puzzle. (Hint: I'm not).
Loved this puzzle. What a couple of tools you are, Nick Offerman and Christina Iverson. And I loved Nick's comments at WordPlay.
Yep, it was tough all right. Took me twice as long as an average Wednesday. Some answers involved unfamiliar words: NERFED, JIGGETY, INRUN, ALTTEXT, ONSTAR. Some involved unusual letter strings: BBQED and WWII VET. I decided in the end that both of these were completely fair game. I'd never seen ANT EGGs on a Thai menu, not here in the United States, but I'd be willing to give them a try. A little acidic pop, they might be nice.
Some of the cluing was just tough. Tough to come up with TURTLE (but mmm... turtles). Record label for SZA and A$AP Rocky? Really no idea. And this is the other crossword ELIHU (that I happened to know, but many will not); the more famous, I guess, is ELIHU Yale. I had to look up the latter just now. I get the impression of a corrupt POS who happened to be the main benefactor of what came to be Yale University. A man of his time who became filthy rich through the slave trade, he is the central head of hair on display here. (One wonders what that enslaved child is thinking. Something approximating WHAT A TOOL?) The university these days seems not entirely at EASE being named after him.
Thought of Chairman Mao and Chairman of the Board Sinatra before chair man EAMES.
Despite the difficulty, I liked it QUITE A BIT. Thank you both, Nick Offerman and Christina Iverson!
Exactly the same for me!
webwinger
A rare instance of my alma mater helping me with the NYT crossword. ELIHU Root is buried in the campus cemetery, his former home is a campus building, and approximately a million things on campus are named for his family.
I disagree. Moving the "saw" part to the clue is exactly what does make it work, because it's asking for what kind of saw? A JIG saw. I mean, it's a crossword puzzle. You have to look at soeme of the clues with a bit of a side eye to make them work. I loved this puzzle!
I’ll just say I went to Thailand earlier this year for work and my Thai coworkers had me try ant eggs because it was a “traditional” dish. But some of them had never actually had it before either. Definitely felt like a novelty even for them, but it was a thing.
So many people complaining that this puzzle took longer than usual, that they had to work a little. As someone else asked, Are these the same people who always complain that the puzzles are too easy? It seems everyone wants the PERFECT whoosh-whoosh...except that then they don't. This puzzle was inventive, chewy, funny. I really appreciated it! Great job, Nick and Christina.
Har. A wacky puztheme clearly developed by a coupla screwy drivers. Admired its jiggetiness.
Did take a while to catch onto the puztheme, pre-revealer. Maybe cuz a BIT ain't exactly a tool, at our house. And JIG is sorta a short version of jigsaw, I reckon now.
staff weeject pick: BRB. Assume this is textin gibberish, even tho the clue didn't admit to that. Cuz it'd be kinda confusin for someone to just blurt out "Brb!" to you. You might think they just burped, or somesuch.
fave stuff: The Jiggety Jaws of Themedness. CRAFTBEERS. FRONTLINES. TURTLE.
Also enjoyed WWIIVET's scruffy look. Very brrrb-like.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Ms. Iverson and Mr. Iverson celeb.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... the Halloween decors are out on all my neighbor's lawns, so the least M&A can do is issue a few of these, off and on ...
"Count Them Out" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Fantastic Wednesday morning puzzle! My workman like approach paid off.
Well, I know what a PLANE is and what a MODEL PLANE is. And that's about it.
First of all, I know nothing about tools. I wouldn't know a BIT or a JIG if I fell over them. Worse, I didn't get the tool phrases either. What's BOSS LEVEL? Is that where you're at when you're the CEO?
My biggest decision was would it be BOSS LEVEL/ALT TEXT or BOSS LEVER/ART TEXT? LEVER sounded more like a tool to me than LEVEL, so I guessed wrong. You ask how could I have written in BOSS LEVER? Made no less sense to me than JIGGETY JIG.
Nothing about this puzzle worked for me. Add TURTLE and NERFED to the mix and I sort of felt like I was on a different planet.
Was 100% sure OFL would rate this Easy. I must have a warped wheelhouse ‘cause I whooshed through this thing like it was Monday.
Thanks for doing the looking-up part, tht. I guess it is more accurate (since most xword answers are words that can be found in the dictionary) that I don’t consider that it should be a word! And you’re right, NETFULL isn’t a word either, so maybe what I mean is that it seemed to me the right answer to the clue should have been FULLNET, which of course doesn’t fit either in the space provided or in the context of the rest of the puzzle.
Why do carpenters have no sex life?
Because of the CORKERSCREW
Read Lord Jim. It’s a gorgeous novel!
I'm familiar with David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries from his reading it on This American Life years ago. Listen:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/47/christmas-and-commerce/act-two-22
p.s. Mr. Iverson celeb = Mr. Offerman dude, of course.
My daddy was a WWIIVET, btw. So enjoyed that ultra-abbreved entry in that sense, also.
M&A
What a disappointment. I look forward to Christina's puzzle but this wasn't one of them. The theme was boring (no pun intended). INRUN & TURTLE were WOES. Some of the cluing had hints of "Christina" but mostly I didn't like this puzzle. And the theme - "WHAT A TOOL" - well, I won't reveal what my initial response to that was - you can use your (dirty) imagination.
[Excellent means of avoiding sex]:
CORKERSCREW
Let's get JIGGETY with it!
Kind of disappointing, really. I barely know who Nick Offerman is. Heard the name, can’t place him, but have enjoyed solving Ms. Iverson’s puzzles in the past. Not this time.
As far as the themers go, MODEL PLANE was just OK, QUITE A BIT fell short because it’s not too spectacular, BOSS LEVEL was pretty good, but JIGGETY JIG was pretty awful. Did like the revealer, though. Sounds like something I might say.
Liked NERFED at 21A and the EAMES clue at34A, though it could have been chairperson. Remember Charles had a partner in that endeavour. Cerulean expanse clue at 67A (SKY) was nice because, though the colour can appear dull sometimes (depends on what you butt it up against) I’ve always loved the word. From the Latin “caeruleum” for, you guessed it, sky.
Didn’t understand ALT TEXT for a kind of image and I thought the clueing for 58D PRO was awkward.
Oh well, bring on Thursday.
I’m one of the few who enjoyed this puzzle a lot - and I didn’t see who constructed it until I read this blog. I found it slightly, pleasantly more challenging than most Wednesdays. The revealer was perfect. JIGGETY JIG added extra whimsy to a wacky collection of themers. Nice one.
BRB is Be Right Back, not to be confused with AFK, which is Away From Keyboard.
Fail. I had MOB instead of GOB (which I still think is a better answer) and had never heard of an ANT EGG. I suspected ANTEGM was wrong, but couldn’t figure out how. INRUN and JIGGETY looked more likely to be the errors.
Must have had tools on the brain today, wrote in lord jig for lord Jim. Tried. craft brews then craft beers, never did see eames. Went with art text, ended up with boss lever & on and on.
Gave up in the end
Huh, and I was so sure Rex would find no sparkle in ALT TEXT. I sure didn't. No idea what it was and after Googling post-solve, I'm still not certain.
My sign of justice (the zodiac got me with its misdirection) was a scale, confirmed by 4D's Place = site. RUING made me decide to scrap scale but it took QUITE A BIT of time before the rest of that sector got filled in. The U of ELIHU finally broke it open for me, with LIEU now obvious.
I didn't think about it at all before Rex commented on JIGGETY JIG. It's certainly a phrase, as found in the nursery rhyme, "To market, to market to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, JIGGETY JIG." But as a stand-alone word that means "great", that's beyond my ken.
My husband is quite a good handyman. He firmly believes in building jigs in order to be most efficient and accurate in his woodworking. We have many saws but I'm not sure if we have a jig saw.
WHAT A TOOL, great inspiration for this puzzle. Thanks, Nick and Christina!
I had DRAFTBEER and DPLUS at 9D and 9A, which still both kind of work. Admittedly, CRAFTBEER makes more sense for 9D.
Plus side: David SEDARIS was in town last week. He signed a book for my daughter-in-law. Both my wife's brothers were NH state champion ski jumpers, INRUN was a gimme. I've used all the TOOLS mentioned in the puzzle (agree that a JIG is a stretch) and after two themers I went and filled in the revealer.
Minuses: Agree with @Anon 8:29 that a "girlfriend" is a "novia". An AMIGA is a girl friend. I know, close enough for crosswords. but still. See also chairman vs. chair man . No idea on NERFED or ALTTEXT Worst was BOSSLEVEL, thinking a BASSLEVEL would insure stability in a musical performance, and then I couldn't see FRONTLINES because of the FRAN beginning. Technical DNF. Aargh.
I am unaware of Mr. Offerman's oeuvre, but that's on me. I have to say to NO and CI that this was definitely Not On my wavelength and Came Incredibly close to Nancy's wall. Thanks for a workout anyway.
BOSS LEVEL is a video gaming thing -- I only know it because it was in the grid as an answer earlier this year, touching off a huge debate between charges of obscurity and replies that millions of gamers know it and we should stop being so elitist. It seems to have stuck in my mind.
I liked it; tricky clues, new-to-me terms (INRUN, ANT EGG, NERFED)--just enough extra difficulty to make it extra fun.
I'm kind of taken aback how many people don't know IBSEN, though. And Rex, you should read LORD JIM. I think of it all the time.
I had to look it up. The name Root didn't register with me when my daughter and I visited Hamilton College which was one of the schools she applied to. The campus is really lovely, as is the surrounding area, but the main takeaway for my daughter was that the college was "too fancy" for her, and the main takeaway for us was that it was a little beyond our purse anyway. Today I learn that ELIHU Root was ardently opposed to women's suffrage, and opposed to feminism generally.
Yes -- I had "mob" for "gob." Made more sense.
I did, and I laughed
The more I read these comments the more I realize that a lot of people don't like a puzzle if 1) they don't get a word right on the first try, and 2) it takes them longer than usual to solve the puzzle. That's what they care about—accuracy on the first guess, and a fast time. I have a completely different outlook; I don't mind having to rework tricky sections to get the right answers; that's what I expect from anything but the simplest puzzle..And I don't want endless frustration but I dont care about a super-fast time. If it's "not in my wheelhuse" I can still appreciate the puzzle. I'm really glad I haven't outgrown this approach!
Nancy's wall???
Medium.
Costly erasures - scale before LIBRA and me too for ELL
WOEs - NERFED, INRUN, ANT EGG, and ALTTEXT.
Delightful, amusing, liked it a bunch!
👍👍
That's unfortunate.
That is an embarrassing number of things to be ignorant of.
That’s what they want you to think!
@Anon 11:47 AM: When the esteemed blog commentator who goes by "Nancy" declares she is fed up with a puzzle, which she solves in the printed version, she throws her newspaper against the wall. Her poor ink-streaked wall. At least that's what she tells us. I'm pretty sure it's a metaphor.
Thanks for the accurate explanation, @tht. I should add that if the puzzle is really awful, the hurling of the newspaper is usually followed by the sound of a SPLAT.
Sharon, you're right, an Eames chair reference did make a recent appearance. I recall commenting on how I managed to score a really good knock-off of a lounge chair/ottoman combo, originally priced at just over $3,000 for just $650. Looks great and is super comfortable. Just checked and new authentic ones go for - depending on who's listing them - $5.000 to $13.000. I'm pretty happy with the counterfeit.
ensure. Come on man.
I had the same blunder
Missed the “U” in “ELIHU” and I haven’t seen “ALTTEXT” in many years, back when I was writing HTML code.
@Lewis 7:36 am: perfect!
This was challenging for me, so it was a surprise to look at the timer and see 16 minutes. It seemed a lot longer! As Rex and others said, the clues were often very vague. Nice revealer!
I had FLAG before VANE for "It's blowing in the wind". C'mon, vanes don't actually "blow", they pivot.
Re ALT TEXT: when I first started doing web pages in the 1990s, we used that attribute to create a "tool tip"... when your mouse was over the picture, the alt text would appear. Then later everyone realized that was not the intent of it; in fact it was supposed to help visually impaired people by describing what the picture contained. So then came the "title" attribute which is actually intended to create a tooltip effect. Of course nowadays, everyone's using a touch device so I'm not sure they ever see it.
I once heard a radio disk jockey say “And that song you just heard was written by George Gershwin and his lovely wife Ira.” (He was dead serious!)
As much as I am a Nick Offerman fan, and as much as I sincerely respect Ms. Iverson’s experience and acumen re the art and craft of cruciverbalism, and as much as I appreciated and enjoyed today’s crunchier than usual Wednesday, I call foul on JIGGETY. And yet, JUTS crossing NETFUL was where I got my whoosh on.
Other than the JIGGETY JIG, all the other theme first word answers could be descriptive of the TOOL they each describe. I have very (OK, very, very) little “fixit” capability, but I have watched every episode of “This Old House” and “The New Yankee Workshop,” and the master, Norm Abrams, taught me so much about tools. I think that’s why I object, despite its cuteness to JIGGETY. Honestly, I think that’s why it made the cut (pun intended).
The NW gave me pause for sure. I thought BOW was a very likely answer and went with it. Then the only 3 letter car I could think of was BMW. With much trepidation, I left it and started looking at the downs, with only a scintilla of hope that both my answers were correct. Seriously, double B? Prob’ly not.
But wait! There’s hope! Sure enough BBQED fits, so thanks Uncle Bob. Any time I get a “Bob’s your uncle,” moment, I have to thank my actual Uncle Bob. He was my dear Gran’s son, my mom’s brother and at first he resented my being admitted into Gran’s crossword gravitational sphere, but I heard her comment once, “Robert, you know what a handful she can be, would you rather have her out egging houses with the boys around here?” Sort of a good news/bad news moment for me, but sometimes the truth hurts. I was actually more than a mere “handful.” More like a truckload careening for a head-on collision. Oops, oversharing. Right, the puzzle.
Anyway, I saw the double WWs and the clue clearly pointed to WWII VETS. That took care of the NW.
The middle top gave me some real pushback. As many times as I have automatically plopped in LIEU, for “place,” today I put in situ. My brain should have warned me that to work, the answer would have been “situs, ” but no red flags from the grey matter. So, I left it and put in “scale” for 4A “sign of justice.” Egad what a mess! That little chunk north-center was the finale today.
Once I whooshed through the entire bottom from NETFUL on down - thank you Ms. Iverson and editorial friends for the fair crosses today - and had enough to get the WHAT A TOOL reveal, my finish was pretty easy.
Clever clues (loved seeing AEGIS), humor (ok, I can actually hear my fabulous handyguy, Duke saying “Hey, in the bit kit, hand me the JIGGETY JIG, the one next to the masonry bit), solid theme and some real pushback for a Wednesday.
What I probably loved the most today is that for a wonderful change of pace, my visa to our constructors’ wavelengths got stamped and from the beginning, I enjoyed my travels enormously. I think Nick and Christina should continue collaborating. Pure fun today.
Anon @ 10:07: I'm glad you enjoyed the puzzle! But I disagree that JIG is a "kind of saw". "Jigsaw" is one word. A jigsaw is a "kind of saw". A "jig" is a different tool altogether.
Admitting ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of. Your attitude however, is.
Jigggety made me think of Quagmire.
If I have to know who some celebrity is and have to read some constructor notes published somewhere else in order to appreciate the theme, then the puzzle already rates a shakey C PLUS in my book. Things kind of went downhill for me from there.
I have some super long drill BITs and can imagine someone saying :Wow, that's QUITE A BIT
Good to know I was not alone in stumbling around a bit on this one: having never seen the word JIGGETY in print I had it spelled as JIGGITY to form a perfectly reasonable-seeming cross with RIO, not realizing that that was spelled REO, and then when I didn't get any completion music spent many a minute on TMC since I'd never heard of that in a streaming context (and indeed, Googling fails to unearth anything pertinent).
I wandered around the entire puzzle and finally got most of it and had to cheat just a tad. Felt like an easy Thursday.
Poof! Again! Wish I knew how I keep doing that.
Where was I? Oh, QUITE A BIT works but the others not. JIGGETY, BOSS and MODEL to describe tools? Nah. Strikes me as too goofy.
I don't think a LEVEL is a TOOL any more than a yardstick is a TOOL It's a measuring device. And how does it ensure "stability", as clued?
I did like seeing 57D AWL. I have several of them. None are particularly AWESOME, though.
Maybe having a workshop full of TOOLs and having used them extensively over the years made this theme way wide of the mark for me.
Anonymous 12:15 PM
You could say that Ibsen is a famous playwright but no need to get nasty. A lot of classic plays aren’t taught in schools these days.
Sharon’s and Les S More
I remember the earlier Eames appearance and have read about the Eames brothers & their famous chairs. (I might have seen one in a museum but not otherwise-). A good knockoff sounds like a great catch!
I did get the trick when I got the first e on a cross. In my wheelhouse. But I was surprised it was on a Wednesday.
Kitshef and the replies
About jigsaw and jig.
I agree with anonymous and Stan Marsh. But mostly because it’s a crossword puzzle with clues not a dictionary with definitions. The clue/answer combo is aimed at the general public and it works perfectly precisely because most people wouldn’t know about the other jig.
The jiggetty part I don’t look up.
Thank you! I thought I was imagining-remembering this!
Anonymous 7:29 AM
Ant egg. I had no idea about weaver or Thai red ants. But the thought occurred to me that some kind a bug was involved. The point is you are not expected to know the answer. But ant and egg are 2 simple words.
Charles and Ray Eames are a husband and wife couple, not brothers. One of the bullet points notes this, and I agree it’s not incorrect to refer to one half of the duo as a “chairman?” despite them both sharing credit for the design.
Dave L
About GOB v mOB.
I didn’t even think of mob because as a long time solver of the Times puzzle gob appears often. (Also mob is restricted mostly to people and the clue wasn’t). Gob may be an annoying singular of convenience but it will appear again!
Espera un segundo.
Love this puzzle sooooo much. Hilarious. Weird. Whoosh-y.
WHAT A TOOL?! It's a little edgy making and publishing a puzzle about our current political leadership. It's obscured nicely with the theme entries, so they probably won't know it's all about them. Even though everything is all about them. And how to get their next yacht. And how to keep those rubber chicken dinners on a dais coming.
Additional theme entries:
-What a tool buys for each child to drive: BMW.
-Sign of justice? When you bought the courts to use as a tool.
-Middling grade: C+ is way better than you should expect from these tools.
-What one does for the King of tools: BOW.
-Location for solar panels for a tool? In the trash! Burn fossil fuels baby.
-What a tool needs: A GOB.
-Those EAMES chairs cost $7K! What a nice place for a tool's ASS.
-What a tool uses to share his thoughts? GAS.
-What a tool is to other tools: BRO.
Nice to see the team cleaned up their APRON game today after such a scandal earlier this week.
UFOs are only a conspiracy if there are no UFOs, even though there ARE.
They made a spelling error. I AM should be I YAM.
@Les S. More (yesterday)
I looked it up and we have several local honey companies here in town. One of them puts honey into bears! I will give the bear-version a try. I can go either way on honey, but not on bears.
❤️ NERFED. [Seedy bar]. JIGGETY JIG. TURTLE. [Cerulean expanse]. BBQED. WWIIVET. POKEY. THE TUBE. [Race with an anchor].
😩 Lifeguards = SAVIORS? Who's got a low bar for salvation now?
People: 5
Places: 2
Products: 8
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 74 (28%)
Funny Factor: 7 😂
Tee-Hee: TIT.
Uniclues:
1 Dance I do to attract the scraggly leftovers.
2 Farter departer.
3 Fellah making bank in Paris.
1 DIVE JIGGETY JIG
2 AM I GAS? EXILE
3 MOULIN BRO PRO
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: What happens when you look for love with dirty thumbs. OK CUPID SMUDGY.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A++
Nice to have a challenging Wednesday to offset the recent easy Fridays and Saturdays. This one put up a fight, which made finishing it all the more satisfying.
Thank you!
Hard for me - and I missed jiggety
Benbini
In defense of TMC , the clue said nothing about streaming. Sister network refers to some kind of channel, in this case, a cable channel
TMC btw frequently appears in the Times puzzle. It is crosswordese. Original clue though.
REO also appears often and is crosswordese . either as the original truck from 100 years ago or the rock group named after it. It is.a gimme for long time solvers. Robert E Olds was kicked out of Oldsmobile when GM bought it so he created a new company using his initials.
Had a feeling Rex wouldn’t like jiggetty. But surprised how many didn’t like the puzzle. It seems to have especially annoyed people who know carpentry well. It’s often noted on the blog that knowing a lot about a subject can often cause problems in crossword solving. This is a perfect example
I enjoyed the theme and the puzzle as a whole. But I knew the names and wasn’t tripped up like Rex was. My dad was also a WWII vet so that went right in. Often write it that way. So it did end up easy for me (I am a very slow solver).
I’m regularly surprised at how many differing solving experiences I read about here. It reinforces my firm belief that we (meaning Science) will never completely understand the human brain.
Yes! I had that same thought while solving. Thank goodness for public radio.
My father and father-in -law were both WWII VETS as well. P.S. love your humor, M&A
LOL, @bertoray! Quagmire’s personality certainly gets him situationally into many a literal quagmire, which is a favorite descriptive words of mine.
Happens to me from time to time - yesterday, for example.
To be clear, my objection is NOT to the clue for JIGGETY JIG. It is that it does not work with the revealer. You would not say "what a tool" to refer to the 'jig' part of a jigsaw. You would say it about a jigsaw, or about a saw, but not about jig- as a prefix.
Omg Lewis…I CANNOT believe that TODAY was a day I was SO busy! I am such an embarrassing Offerman fan. I think I’ve listened to ALL his books (you really DO need to listen, due that “velvet” voice and wit).
I will just say. Once you know about Nick Offerman…the “tools” are, well, so appropos and it gave me great delight. I get it, though.
Oh yeah, I have no use for old Elihu as a person, certainly, and the school as a whole had, at least when I was there, an unfortunate tendency to whitewash the sins of its famous associates. Ezra Pound was an alumnus, as they were often far too keen to celebrate.
Anyway, I wanted to go somewhere else, but my father thought it was the best of the schools I'd gotten into, so my opinions on the subject were unwelcome. I made the best of it and ultimately had a great time, but your daughter was quite right. I hope she was very happy wherever she wound up.
First-ever Wednesday that I simply gave up on, after 20 minutes, because I could see no path forward. After I saw the answers I had been missing, there were no regrets about quitting. Too many obscure clues and/or answers—I could have wasted another hour not getting them.
Yeah clueing as related to "Paramount+", which is in fact a streaming service, well and truly threw me off. I did finally figure out that TMC is something called The Movie Channel, whose affiliation with Paramount+ is rather well buried even in the Wikipedia article.
@Les, I THINK you would be amazed at Nick Offerman’s books. I personally think he has a wit similar to Mark Twain (and I know he reveres Twain). For everyone…if you have NEVER done an audiobook…do an Offerman book that way. So entertaining…
Charles Eames was married to Ray Eames, a woman.
To market to market to buy a fat pig, thrn home again, home again, jiggety jig
POKEY is a common word used to describe prison.
So…a fabulous day AND a bad day! First…as I said above in replies but didn’t see I was in “anonymous” mode….I am a huge Nick Offerman BOOK fan (ONLY audio) that I CANNOT believe I couldn’t get to puzzle until late. I LOVED the puzzle, and, if I may say…it is SO Nick Offerman. (Don’t worry Nick, I’m not a STAN…I’m 70). Now it’s so late in the day…I may not even have my comment published, dammit.
Anyway, for older peeps getting into Nick’s books…don’t read Paddle Your Own Canoe first. Well…it’s good, but I think Nick got a little too much into his lovely wife…Megan Mullally…who he obviously is crazy about. My guess is Megan said…Nick…maybe don’t go there so much. Great job with Gumption and Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. The latter book has a fabulous and funny story about a camping trip that Nick went on with George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco). It’s all funny…but his books are also just…informative, thought-provoking, etc.
Ok, Nick…I’m late in the game but done now. Thank you Nick and Christina!
As usual, Lewis gets it.
A great puzzle. A puzzler’s puzzle.
Jiggetyjig. Look at it. It’s gorgeous.
It’s a fun crossword answer that adds a dash of silliness to our high-brow hobby. It may not exactly match the other themed answers, but it fits, it works, and it just makes the solving a darn jiggety experience.
BMW over BOW to get us started. So good. Theme, theme answers, and reveal were great.
This 15 x15 grid is a perfect square.
I liked everything about this one, kinda scratching my head at some of the nits noted here. A bit more resistance than Wednesdays as of late, along with a couple of new things that I learned, i.e. NERFED AND JIGGETY, so what's not to like here? C'mon - BBQED and WWIIVET!!! How fun is that?! It was a joy to work those two through - letter strings I never would have imagined! That is good stuff!
The theme, themers and revealer all landed really well for me. Clever and it all put up a good fight. The long downs - FRONTLINES and CRAFTBEERS, also look very pretty in the grid.
This was a satisfying solve that that left me wanting more. I give this one way, way higher than a CPLUS :o).
Thank you Nick and Christina for the fun workout today!
I’m on the “read Lord Jim” bus. It’s not Heart of Darkness (top 5 in my best novel list), but it is great!
AGREED!!
Real tough one. Even though some things went in with ease, somehow it played out in a way that it wasn’t all helping with the rest. A lot of the. Same hangups as Rex - ANTEGG, ONSTAR, TURTLE and EAMES all slowed me down. In hindsight I’ve heard of EAMES chairs but didn’t click with me. NETFUL also was a hangup, despite having gotten to NET___
Had put in RUING but removed it since it didn’t gel with the clearly correct peanuts for popular Thai tidbit… ugh. Didn’t know LORDJIM and somehow didn’t connect the dots on POKEY, which made JIGGETYJIG really hard.
Definitely a struggle… I feel like it would’ve been a better experience if some of the cluing had been a bit more (Wednesday) generous
I feel like every day I'm having to write something along the lines of "nerfed does not mean hobbled in gamer slang" I feel like they have always had a problem with not knowing what decade it is, but it's become increasingly worse with just getting the definitions right. At least for this round of "boss level" it's part of the pun, and not a misunderstanding that it is 1988.
@dgd
He was Ransom E Olds.
Roo
dgd. With all due respect, you've got the story right but the name wrong. It's Ransom Eli Olds. I wouldn't get all picky about this if I didn't have a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme convertible parked in my driveway. If you own one you have to know its history.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I like to listen while I drive and I like tools and woodworking and light comedy. Might work.
@Anoa Bob. I have to disagree with you re levels. They are very much tools, indispensable ones, actually. A measuring device is a tool. As for its ability to guarantee stability, I'm not so sure.
Daq Bears!!!
You are kind of "Stanning", Beezer but I promised someone earlier in the comments that I would check out his books. Gotta admire the courage and stamina of anyone who could occupy the same household as Megan Mullally and not go totally bonkers. Well, maybe she's really nice, but her onscreen personality in Will and Grace was terribly grating.
Lord Jim is one of the best novels ever! So many great scenes and Marlow (the narrator) at his finest.
Post a Comment