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Magician of Arthurian legend / TUES 10-28-25 / Little guys in striped coats / Vessel with a spout / Melodramatic crying
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of October! Hope everyone is having a good spooky season, which is coinciding with much nicer, cooler weather (at least here in D.C.). It’s meant having to spend a little longer deciding what to wear when riding my bike (my hands and feet always freeze), but I’ll take this any day over the horrible heat and humidity of the summer. We’re also going to “fall back” soon, which I’m very much not looking forward to because it gets so dark so early. But I think that means it’s time to get cozy: lots of soups and chilis and fall-scented candles. Liverpool and the Steelers aren’t doing so hot right now, so we don’t need to talk about them. But here’s hoping the Blue Jays can somehow win the series against the hated Dodgers.
And in the most important news of all: My puppy is now one year old! I made her a little cake and got her in a party hat (for 0.2 second before she ripped it off) and sang and watched as she licked all the yogurt frosting off the cake.
Anywho, on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: JEWELRY BOX (62A: Personal treasure chest ... or what each of the five groups of shaded letters illustrates?) — The shaded letters form items of jewelry you might find in a jewelry box
Theme answers:
- None really
Uncertain; the earliest use of the term in the idiomatic sense appears to be in the 2007 song "Go Ham on 'Em" by Soulja Boy, although isolated usage goes back earlier. "Ham" is often thought to be an acronym of "hard as a motherf***er" (with go ham then parsing as go hard as a motherf***er), although this may be a backronym. Alternatively, “ham” could be a phonetic clipping of mayhem. The term was popularized by the 2011 song "H.A.M." by Jay-Z and Kanye West. (Wiktionary)
• • •
I quite enjoyed that puzzle! That’s possibly (very likely) because almost all of it skewed a bit younger and was on my wavelength. But the construction overall also seemed very impressive without getting bogged down with too much crosswordese. I liked it enough that I’m even struggling to find much to say about it, when I find I can usually rant for a little while when I don’t totally love a puzzle. The theme is especially impressive because the constructor managed to get five pieces of jewelry in the puzzle, in varying shapes spread out across the puzzle. And we covered most of the major pieces of jewelry (I imagine “necklace” would’ve been pretty hard to work in there). I didn’t use the theme really at all for the solve, but it was something I appreciated after the fact.
I found it amusing that a puzzle with the clue RETRO (7D: Fashionably old-fashioned) would skew sort of the opposite of RETRO. You’ve got AVA (29A: ___ Max, singer with the 2018 hit "Sweet but Psycho"), RAPS (24D: Performs like Playboi Carti, say), ARI (44A: Singer Grande, to fans), GO HAM (51D), ESME (66A: "Twilight" vampire Cullen), and BRODY (55A: Adam of "The O.C.")... I imagine some people Naticked (or came close to it) at GO HAM crossing ESME, given that both are very current pop culture terms. How many of you knew that ESME Cullen is the pseudo mom of Edward, who was dating Bella? I think it might’ve been better to cross GO HAM with some more typical crosswordese such as ESME of “For ESME — with Love and Squalor” from J.D. Salinger to help others get the “m” in GO HAM.
There were a lot of other words in the puzzle that felt fresh and interesting. RATIONALE (56A: Reason why) and REMNANT (24A: Leftover piece) aren’t words you see too often. Neither are TO GO CUPS (49A: Beverage containers for people on the move) and OPEN FACE (9D: Like some sandwiches) and OCTANE (14D: It may be in the low 90s). I liked how there was both MERLIN (4D: Magician of Arthurian legend) and IAN (20D: McKellen who played Gandalf). My favorite clue was definitely for CAPT (33A: Hook or Cook: Abbr.), which got me chuckling.
The jewelry answer that didn’t totally work for me was “bracelet” (formed by the shaded squares of OMELET BAR (19A: Build-your-own breakfast spot) and ZEBRA COLTS (16A: Little guys in striped coats)). ZEBRA COLTS was fairly obscure (to me and at least to my Google searching, as well)... And then SOFA FORTS (22A: Child's living room hideaway) felt like a stretch. It certainly wasn’t the term I used when I was a kid building forts out of pillows or blankets.
But overall, I really enjoyed this puzzle, and it’s got me in a good mood!
Misc.:
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Misc.:
- I just finished watching season 3 of “The Diplomat,” which is a fun (albeit a bit soapy and unrealistic) show. The main character in the show (the titular diplomat) does not really have TACT (27D: Diplomat's skill). She is, however, played by Keri Russell, so who cares?
- One of the saddest parts of being gluten-free (not by choice) is not being able to eat NAAN (63A: Tandoori-baked bread). A lot of things can be replicated, but I’m yet to find a gluten-free NAAN (or focaccia, for that matter) that comes close to the version with regular flour.
- Not sure why, but I never had to take TRIG (36D: Calc prerequisite) before calculus. I took Algebra 2 and pre-calc, but TRIG was actually never offered as its own class for my sister or me. (My dad was very surprised by this.)
- Because it’s spooky season, please enjoy this picture of my puppy in her Halloween costume (she’s a spooky spider). And then, because I have you here as my semi-captive audience, please allow me to also regale you with a picture of Banjo, Red’s brother and my mom’s puppy, when he went to the beach to celebrate his birthday, and another picture of Red enjoying a hike on her birthday. I’m sure they’ll remember these days for years to come.
Signed, Clare Carroll, a true gem :)
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104 comments:
Yes Claire you hit the nail on the head, this is a young person's puzzle. GO HAM????... never not the slightest tiny idea this could possibly be a saying. And as you said, crossing ESME and the other totally Unknown Name BRODY (of course I had BRADY), just awful.
INKER is a real stinker.
Watching Blue Jays and Dodgers in extra innings... gotta get back to it.
Darn it, sorry Clare not Claire!
Rusty. me, myself and I. Happy to whiz by until I didn't. I did several blinks at OPEN FACE and then that GO HAM . Why HAM? Stare at a sandwich. So many to chose from. It took all the crosses to get the answer. Same with GO HAM. I didn't know BRODY but I guessed right. Then ESME at the end. gave me my HAM. (Sigh).....
Dull puzzle overall. I've been in treatment and my brain is dull. I
don't want my puzzle to do the same thing.....
@CDilly, @Gary J and others. Thanks for the nice and comforting words. I love my whimsy Mondays and will try to do them as often as I can.......
The Blue Jays just lost in the bottom of the 18th inning! Bummer.
Medium.
WOEs - AVA, ESME, GOHAM, and BUNYAN. The ESME/GOHAM cross was a coin flip between T and M for me because GO HAM was not exactly inferable (i.e. nonsense to me). I narrowed it down to T or M because they appear most frequently in ES_E, I got lucky. Yes @Clare, where is Salinger when you need him?
Not as fond of this one as @Clare was and GO HAM didn’t help.
Happy Birthday, Red! π
Easy, except (as Clare predicted) for the SW. There I had one WOE (GO HAM at 51D) crossing two other WOES (BRODY, 55A, and ESME, 66A), plus the possibility that 63A could have been roti instead of NAAN.
Easy-breezy throughout, but I needed a lucky guess for the GOHAM/ESME cross. GOHAM could also be slang for "take out sandwich, e.g."
One hand up for GOHAM ESME natick. Was fly(i)ng until then. Damn Dodgers.
I enjoyed both the puzzle and Clare’s writeup. Together they put me in just the bright morning mood that makes one donate to the blog! (Something I know I should do more generously given how much I enjoy it.)
Played harder than a usual for me, perhaps because it skewed younger (as Clare says). BTW, nice assessment of the Diplomat ('soapy', which is a good characterization of season 3). SW corner was very tough with BRODY, ESME and GO HAM.
Cute theme - not a fan of the shaded squares or any graphics that are backed into like this but it does work. Simple but apt revealer.
Tony’s Theme
Other than a few entries - didn’t think the fill trended young. OPEN FACE, IM SO DONE and RATIONALE are all solid. CAPT, TSOS and the PHO - OOPS pair could have been edited better. The shorts tend to bog this one down.
These are the TERMS
Pleasant enough Tuesday morning solve. Nice to see @Gill as always. Red is a good puppy - happy birthday to her.
Oh mama could this really be the end
Some rappers decide to make up GO HAM, 0.001% of the US population maybe uses it for a minute and 15 years later we get the GOHAM/ESME Natick. Skip the jive turkey and GOHAM! Happy early Thanksgiving!
Another hand up. That M was the last letter in. Otherwise a nice, breezy Tuesday. I didn’t have to GO HAM, thank goodness.
Puzzle would have been much crunchier had the answer to 33A been CAPN rather than CAPT.
I always thought it should be HAAM, for the exact backronym (if it is a backformation) that @Clare mentioned. I think HOOP is the weakest theme answer, since there's usually some context to imply earring. But if someone were to ask, "what do you think of my HOOP", their ear is not the first place I'd look. ¯\_(γ)_/¯ Overall it was an enjoyable puzzle for me. Happy Birthday to your pup!
Yes, I guess that was the last square for a lot of us!!!! The final "M" of GOHAM. I also had sOlOCUP before TOGOCUP, so that corner took me as long as the entre rest of the puzzle. Down there in the SW I was really thankful for the BRO-OCH to help me get that corner. All the rest of the puzzle seemed Monday easy. Thanks, Adrianne, for a fun puzzle! And yeah, wasn't that ridiculous, 18 innings??????? I had to go to bed after 15....
I almost dnf'd in the SW corner with about ten squares unfilled. Thanks to the theme, I was eventually able to chip away at it, ending with a complete guess at - you guessed it - ESME/GOHAM. The only ESME I know is Mr. Hennessey's pet snake in Foul Play.
BRODY was also a WoE, but that B-R-O from the theme helped immensely.
And that clue for IM SO DONE was awful, bearing only the most tenuous connection to the answer.
All in all, a very unenjoyable puzzle.
Anyone else try SUE for "Good name for a chef?"?
Hey All !
Nice puz. Good fill working around the stacked Themers. As with @Clare, didn't use Theme while solving, if puz was tougher, then probably the shaders would've been helpful.
Always got a chuckle out of the second time Stanley Ipkiss puts on "The Mask", and says, "Ooooohhh, somebody STOP ME!"
Also agree about that M of ESME/GOHAM. Only guessed the M, from recognizing ESME as a feasible name thanks to Crossworld. GO HAM? OK,, if you say so.
Time for my EXIT, don't be SOBBING. π
Have a great Tuesday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
You are correct. Go ham esme no idea. I thought it could be go hat este just as easily
This is Adrianne’s third NYT puzzle in four months and she’s been making puzzles less than two years. That’s a wow in my book.
Already, she’s established that her puzzles will include answers with spark. A grid with compelling answers is so much richer than simply a fill-in-the-blank. It’s an outing with side trips that ping the brain with images, memories, reactions, and beauty.
Today I pictured an adorable ZEBRA COLT, a TEAPOT whistling and emitting steam, the striking TAZO logo. I pictured a SNOB’s face with its distinctive eyebrows. I fondly remembered my kids frantically building SOFA FORTs. I tasted NAAN and drank in the aroma of an Indian restaurant. I “Whaaa?”-ed at GO HAM, heard the fizz of an AERATEd drink, experienced soothing hot tub JETs. I melted over the beauty of the word REMNANT.
That is, my brain was pinging all over the place. Who needs a virtual reality headset when a puzzle can take you so many places as you’re sitting in a chair?
So, Arianne, please keep packing your puzzles with pingers. Thank you for a fabulous outing today!
I actually enjoyed seeing the embedded jewelry, and even cobbled together BROOCH to help me get to BRODY.
I’m not a fan of that SW section, even though TBONE, ORCAS and NAAN were gimmies. I didn’t trust IM SO DONE and I decided to take a one square DNF rather than run the alphabet at GO HAM crossing ESME.
My parents were also surprised the absence of Trig class at my school, but much like how I took "Global Studies" instead of "History", Pre-Calculus is the same thing with a slightly broader focus. It seems to vary a bit, but in my case that meant mostly that we covered limits and studied other kinds of functions, not just trigonometric ones.
Would Rex have commented that the theme answers are not arranged contiguously?
Administrative note: I will be away for a week and a half (big family event), though I should be able to sneak in Monday’s list of Favorite Clues. Wishing you all well and look forward to returning to you!
“Zebra colts” and “to go cups”are just lame. So is “open face”, which should be open-faced. Right, I also didn’t know “go ham,” but guessed at Esme bc nothing else fit. I don’t mind skewing young but why are the references always to ephemeral pop culture items that, given the vast territory this encompasses, are inescapably niche? The unwatchably boring vampire-movie mother? Please.
Played harder than Medium. You can easily guess the reason, over in the SW. I put in BRODY (with Adrien, not Adam, pictured in my mind -- no relation between the two that I can see), then took it out, then put it back in... Eventually Salinger came by to help in that corner (ESME). But I also had a hard time seeing TO-GO CUPS ("TOte CUPS?"). As well as I'M SO DONE (I had I'M and the S, but Stuck is only five letters long, so then what?).
(Pfft. I wish Adrianne Baik had said "STOP ME" to whoever was in the room with her, before she decided to go with GO HAM. Honestly, do young people use that expression?)
It started out fine in the NW, but ZEBRA was not followed by an immediate whooshy COLTS. Similarly, it took a while to see FORT after SOFA. INKER is something I resisted putting in. I waffled a bit between BUNYAN and Milton: a moment of hesitation. The rest went in straightforwardly.
There is no logical reason why one would need TRIG before Calculus, and indeed I've taught trig-free versions of calculus when called upon to do so. I prefer teaching it with trigonometric functions included, because it's a richer course. Actually, what I think would be really great is a more sophisticated course that introduces TRIG functions via the complex exponential -- and this could be done if you take the underlying geometry seriously, with rotations and dilations and all that. Complex numbers are typically given SHORT shrift for way too long in the high school and undergraduate curricula, but there is so much insight to be gained from taking them seriously. It's almost as if students remain stuck in the 1500s, with complex numbers being mysterious and scary, and not quite "real" like real numbers. But in fact they're realer than real.
(Apologies to those who have no idea what I'm talking about. But some of you surely will [hi, @mathgent].)
Okay, let that be all for now -- have a good one.
Another hand up. Also had IMSOGONE which messed up the Adam of the O. C. cross. Quite a Natick for a Tuesday.
I took TRIG as a one-semester course in 1952. Solid Geometry took up the other semester. When the New Math reshaped the curriculum in the early sixties, TRIG got folded into Advanced Algebra and parts of Solid Geometry moved into Calculus.
Pre-rap, I think the expression was "Go hard or go home."
Agree with everyone regarding GOHAM. Should have been clued as; Advice from a friend at a deli.
And here I thought GO HAM had something to do with the football (soccer) club... was a natick until ESME seemed like a name; no idea to whom the clue was referring, tho, so thx Clare, for that, I guess?
Clare, Algebra 2 is the new Trigonometry. I liked the puzzle too even though I'm old enough to have taken Trig when we had to look up the functions in the back of our textbooks.
All that young person’s non-RETRO stuff that Clare liked was completely unknown to me (GO HAM?!?!?!), but somehow I got it all from crosses, so all is cool.
Not just the near Natick of ESME crossing NOHAM but BRODY in the same little block. You cannot put that much recent culture in one little area.
Doctor: Where did you first experience symptoms?
Actor: The ONSET was ONSET.
Why is Ms. Lauder like a stink bug? They both begin with ESTEE.
And while we're at it, why is Donald Trump like a giant Vietnamese soup mug? They're both huge PHO CUPS.
That S OF A FORT answer was a real S of a B. Kinda like that Crosby guy. That SOBBING. Gimme Sinatra any day.
You can STOPME but you can't ESME. Thanks for the nice write-up, Clare. Surprised you didn't mention GOHAM being a cheer for your (kinda) rival West Ham United, who are currently lurking 18 points back of Arsenal and a mere 11 off of Liverpool. Happy Birthday to Red and Banjo! And thanks for a fun puzzle, Adrianne Baik.
And yet another hand up. I thought this one, particularly in the SW, was extremely, grossly, unfairly difficult, especially for a Tuesday.
Yeah, I had to come here to be sure of GO HAM. ESME was OK once I had the ES_E (Este is a famous surname in Italy, but I don't think it would be a first name), but the other mystery actor could have been BRaDY. But GO ___ seemed likely, and then I noticed the theme, and I've never heard of a braoch, so OK.
But are ORCAS deep-sea predators? Being mammals and all, I don't think they can go down more than 3,000 feet or so, and prefer to hunt closer to the surface, where the fish are.
Happy Birthday, Red!
By the way, one of the most moving Constructor’s Notes I can recall came with Adrianne’s first puzzle. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2025-06-20.html .
PHO CUPS. That's devious.
Absolute Natick. I solved it by typing in letters until the app liked it.
I don't get it, and I'll bite. Why would he?
Weirdly the Natick for me was the crossing of IM SO DONE / BRODY, where I had IM SO gONE (thinking the get me out of here inferred leaving a place), and I don’t know The OC so BROgY felt like a fine answer. When I didn’t get the happy music I changed that, but had I been doing the print version probably would have failed.
Same ... the M of GO HAM/ESME was the last letter for me, never having heard of either answer. Running through the alphabet, GO HAM seemed the only plausible answer, so I guessed it and, voila.
The experience of solving this would have been exactly the same if there weren't any JEWELRY BOXes at all. I did notice BRACELET and pulled a Lewis, trying to come up with the revealer, but I couldn't. I suppose boxes can come in all sizes and shapes, but I never thought of it.
What I did think of was the Louvre jewel heist. All those gorgeous, beautifully-wrought and historical pieces -- assumed by everyone to have already been hacked to pieces so they can be fenced. That's what the gray squares seemed to represent: jewelry broken into pieces.
But knowing how ridiculously long the time between puzzle submission and puzzle appearance in the NYT is, I knew this puzzle could not have been based on or inspired by the Louvre heist.
I, too, couldn't finish the SW corner. I did correct I'M SO GONE to I'M SO DONE for "Get me out of here!" But GO HAM? Fuhgeddaboudit. And as for ESME? A Salinger clue next time, please.
Me too, for GOHAM crossing ESME. GOHAM was a total and complete unknown. I have seen a couple of those vampire movies, but was somehow convinced that the actor named Cullen was a man, which prevented me from guessing ESME for a long time.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Red!!!
A fun, very quick puzzle - except for GO HAM. Thank you, Adrianne - nice to see you again so soon (didn't we see you just last week? :)
Here too. Zero clue on either word.
Oh no! You were the "KIT KAT" Sunday Constructor - where I lost my streak!
Well, thanks anyway :)
Here's the difference...World Series games attract huge TV audiences. That means extra innings are valuable. The more innings the merrier, and the more commercials the merrier. Believe me...last night was a windfall.
I liked the pieces of JEWELRY, each in its own dedicated BOX., and I enjoyed ZEBRA COLTS, STOP ME, RATIONALE, and SOBBING, which reminded me - in a good way - of my sodden condition at the end of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life with Lana Turner. Talk about melodrama! Recommend for anyone wanting a good cry. Otherwise...when I got to GOHA? crossing ES?E, a fit of petulance ("I'm supposed to know those on a Tuesday?") led me to write in the first consonant that seemed reasonable, a "t." When the app didn't accept it, I came up with the correct "m," admittedly more likely for ESME.
Not a promising start up top, as the word pairs ZEBRACOLTS and SOFAFORTS were both the first time I had seen these words together, and I don't think I have ever seen either of them in the wild. I finally remembered TAZO, which I thought I had only seen in crosswords, and then the other day I noticed that our box of teas, which sits on top of the microwave, had a TAZO box staring me right in the face. Oh.
DNF in the SW, hello friends. Can't run the alphabet on paper. I would have guessed M but definitely would have preferred the "love and squalor" connection.
Do people really say INKER? Hello to AVA, who should be a Gardner, and BRODY, who should be Miss Jean in her prime. Maybe I'm dating myself.
Nice enough Tuesday, AB. Absolutely Baffled in the SW, but at least I have lots of company. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
And when I was in school, we learned Unified Math (aka SSMCIS). There was no geometry, or TRIG, or calculus, or algebra. Just six years of Unified Math.
NHL and NFL also use different rules in the postseason for games tied at the end of regulation.
SNL did a skit about the kingdom of Fah which got by the censors repeatedly referring to the Fah queen, the Fah prince and princess and, yep, the FAH KING. I tried to figure out how to get something like that on a sign for No Kings gathering, settled for
I HATE (what)
AMERICA
(is becoming)
Good one! Sounds more chef-y than STU.
My wife knew (or guessed) ESME; I didn't even notice GOHAM and only learned of its meaning(?) here. Boo.
I didn't know GO HAM either, but I'm not sure I would consider it a natick, because what other letter besides M could go in ES_E to make a name?
Consider the TV audience for a World Series game (size). Then consider the cost to a sponsor. Then consider how many ads were run during 18 innings.
I liked this puzzle...to me, ESME was the most probable way to successfully complete ES_E, so that clue didn't bother me. And I wouldn't call ZEBRA COLTS obscure; it's a straightforward answer to a very cute clue: "little guys" (COLTS) in "striped coats" (ZEBRA HIDES). I agree the puzzle was a little chewy for a Tuesday but I don't think that's a bad thing. Thanks for the fun, Adrianne!
I liked the whimsy of ZEBRA COLTS, and REMNANT made me happy to think of sewing. TAZO, TEAPOT and PHO on a nice wet fall day…
In the SW my first pass was solo CUPS. Needed the BROOCH to get the O for BRODY, and ended the puzzle with a sorry natick at the M for GOHAM.
Precalc = trig these days
Tea in the 1D clue, and tea in the TEAPOT. I suppose, for these early week puzzles, a dupe like that isn't going to "help" one's solve by sparking an aha - 30A was a gimme.
Like @Carola, I threw in a T at 51D. Hey, EStE and ESTEE, why not? Yes, ESME should have been obvious and would have been with the Salinger clue but not as clued.
24D, when you have an artist with a name that includes Playboi, it has to be a rapper, right?
SOFA FORTs were more fun to assemble than they were to actually hang out in. Sort of like rearranging Barbie furniture, which was much more fun than pretending Barbie was doing something. I wasn't much of a doll person.
Adrianne Baik, thanks for an interesting Tuesday puzzle.
And @Gill I, it's good to see you two days in a row!
@kitshef Hadn't heard of this, and had to look it up. To be honest, reading the description, it doesn't sound that stupid an idea. But I'm guessing you didn't like it. (I was born near the beginning of the 60s and so I was exposed a bit to "New Math", and I seemed to have survived it, but by the time I was in high school, the curriculum was very traditional.)
But very appropriate.
Jewel of a TuesPuz -- times five.
staff weeject picks: CHO/PHO. Loopy ... er ... HOOPy.
fave puz thing extra: GOHAM. Ba'man's home city, of course.
Thanx for sharin them family jewels, Ms. Baik darlin. Well crafted bling.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
... and now, for another two cents worth ...
"Small Change" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
No shaded squares on the puzzle I printed out. Didn't interfere with solving, but the revealer made no sense. I was trying to come up with the Cullen boyfriend's first name, but for some reason I couldn't remember it (still can't), but remembered Esme. Weird brain processes. Go Ham and Brody were complete mysteries. (Dare I admit I'm a Dodgers fan from waaaay back to Brooklyn?) And the Chiefs did Go Ham on Washington last night. Great write-up, Clare, puppies and all.
Pablo, I sympathize with your TAZO experience. I’ve stated with certainty in this forum that Takis (the snack food) are not sold in Vermont. Then the other day I noticed them in the grocery store and realized that they’ve been there for quite some time. Just never registered. Let’s see if I can pull that out of the memory banks the next time that brand name appears in the crossword.
Dratted slang vs trivia did me in. I had to try the alphabet til it was right.
Natick city on the M in the ESmE/HAm cross.
Nice to see you again girl. Hope you’re doing well.
Andy-Now I have to check out local grocery stores and see if they've crossed the line into NH. If they did I haven't noticed.
SUE as a chef's name is also appropriate if you get botulism at that chef's restaurant
@tht - On the contrary, I thought Unified Math was excellent. Although looking back on it now, I think it was very strong on algebra, trig, and calculus, but weak on geometry, and that relative weakness in geometry continues with me to this day.
#Teedmn: "30A was a gimme" ... unless you put 'kettle' in first as I did.
Solve this, as I usually do on a Tuesday, as a downs-only. Had a bit of trouble in th NE when I couldn’t get WACKO or OPEN FACE because, based on a handful of crosses, I had SOFA tenT at 22A. Eventually sorted that out and cruised through the rest of the puzzles until I hit - you guessed it - the infamous SW clusterf**k. If you think it was tough doing it in the normal fashion, try doing it with no across clues.
Huge initial hold up down there was having _O_O CUPS ay 49A and thinking it might be a beer pong clue, hence sOlO cups. Wasn’t really convince that I’M SO DONE was right and wondered why skirt steak wouldn’t work at 49D. Put in T-BONE, took it out, put it back in. It worked with ORCA to suggest BROOCH and I was able to claw my way out of there. Tried to ignore 51D as long as I could and, like a whole lot of you, successfully completed my solve with the M in ESME. Could have been EStE, the noble renaissance house, or ESsE, latin "to be" but I prefer some Salinger myself. The fact that it wasn’t actually the titular Salinger character didn’t bother me when I got the congrats. Whew, as they say in Wordle. Or is it Phew? I can never remember.
I liked most of the long answers and a bunch of the mediums, but that SW corner. Ouch!
Oh forgot to mention last night; Clare mentioned The Diplomat... About a year ago I watched a series called exactly that, but it was about British diplomats in Barcelona. It was great! Much better than the American one which came out at the same time.
Oh, and Dodgers, 18th inning, painful to watch.
I can see how a colt can be lame, but a cup?
Good puzzle, good write-up. "I'm so done dealing with these people, get me out of here". Seem very related to me. In the minority on go ham, though I usually see/hear went ham. Most often in sports ball contexts.
Beautiful -- thank you.
That's what I had first!
Yup
SW: Two named actors that I don't know, crossed by a slang word. FTS.
Okanaganer and others
I had of course being a Boomer the most troubled at the M cross
Adam Driver is the more common actor clued by Adam these days but Adam Brody was once very often in the Times puzzle, old crosswordese He won an Oscar for best actor in Piano a very good movie I disagree that Brody was an awful choice. The M remained a problem but nothing else made any sense. I had at first the same (sexist?) assumption that Cullen was a man. But ESME worked
BTW Rex defined a natick as 2 obscure for most people PROPER nouns crossing at an uninferable letter. Ham has neither a proper noun clue and is apparently well known by young people. It is not a natick but pushing it on Tuesday. As Clare said.
Gotta agree with your first line but as for the rest of your post ... well, we've already eaten our Thanksgiving bird, a 15 pound, locally grown turkey, brined by me and perfectly roasted by my daughter-in-law.
It's colder up here, so we've already celebrated our harvest festival but maybe I'll have to think about baking a ham on American Thanksgiving in honour of my beleaguered friends down south. Thanks for the suggestion.
Anonymous 6:12am
I had no clue about HAM but it was the only answer that made sense from crosses. So only 300,000 people know go ham? Clare knew it immediately. Probably tens of millions of people know it as rap speak, which is the most popular music genre, which I can’t stand btw
Ditto the Twilight series, though to cross them might have been pushing it on a Tuesday
Kitshef
Didn’t know Twilight at all but equally clueless. about your Foul Play reference. What I know is the Salinger reference, which Clare mentioned. Pabloinnh would call it an old friend a/ka crosswordese.
Different generations different references. Doesn’t make the puzzle bad.
Les S More
I disagree. Especially on a Tuesday. think sous chef is a lot less known than stew!,
Anonymous 8:18 am
Should be? Crosswords are based on what Americans say. And people say open face. Often.
Should is irrelevant in the context.
The end of your comment, well the same point. this is not a literary supplement The Times puzzle is web site aimed at large audience. It is what it is.
I am happy I didn’t watch the Series. Not so anti Dodger as someone , but I was surprised to hear how well Toronto was doing, so got interested in the results.
One cross never has nor never will destroy a puzzle for me. I didn’t enjoy that last square but I did get the M for the win! I agree with Clare that an acronym is an unlikely origin of HAM. (usually made up after the fact). There is an argument that using that clue crossing with a Twilight reference was pushing things on a Tuesday. Maybe a witty clue for ham?
Clare had a great write up today.
I did use the theme to enter brooch
I did like the purple overall.
Clare, thanks for sharing the pictures of Red and Banjo. Red is very tolerant. I once had a 120 pound “Rottman Shepweiler” (half pure German Shepherd/half pure Rottweiler) whom we called “Marshy” because she was soft and fluffy like a marshmallow and looked like a burnt one - all black with tan eyebrows, tan spits on her feet and a small grey blaze on her chest. She would do absolutely anything for my daughter and often was costumed for exciting roles with Barbie and the troll dolls. My cat? Don’t even try it. She figured out a way to escape from three different “cones of shame” after some surgery. Vet said she would do more harm to herself if we persisted so she won!
For me the puzzle was mostly easy until I hit the SW and the names. I watch neither show, and to make things a touch harder, the cross GO HAM was way outside my ken. The GO part was easy, but once I got the H from OCHO, I was lost. Fortunately, easy help came from NAAN (it’s always either NAAN or roti) and the S from ORCAS and the T BONE gave me enough to assume we were looking for ESME and BRODY. I might check out “The O.C.,” but never “Twilight,” so I just keep learning all those names until the show and films are no longer a thing.
Super easy and obvious theme and both easier but less engaging (for me) than yesterday. Excellent early week puzzle for newer solvers though. Demonstrates a frequent style of theme and is an easy solve.
Sorry you couldn’t finish this Tuesday puzzle.
NYT editors: please more clues from 75 year old short stories, less slang popularized 15 years ago.
dgd, you're thinking of adrian brody, who won best actor for 'the pianist,' not adam brody.
GOHAM == WALOTB (What A Load Of Total Bull...)
The GOHAM/ESME cross would have raised my hackles on a Saturday -- a pure Natick for maybe 98% of people who regularly solve the puzzle - but on a Tuesday???
@kitshef Oh, that's great to hear! But I'm a little confused. You said in your first comment that there was "no geometry, or TRIG, or calculus, or algebra". Do you mean simply that there were no courses by those names, but they taught those subjects anyway?
I had NO FAUX KING TRUMP. Worked for me.
Enjoyed this, cute theme that works. Like many, and as Claire pointed out, I was among those who Naticked for a bit on the GOHAM/ESME crossing, but not for too long. ESME is my go to name for the letters ES_E exactly because of what Claire pointed out - the brilliant Salinger short story, For Esme With Love and Squalor. At my age, I still pick up Catcher In The Rye and Nine Stories on an all too regular basis. My younger son is named Holden - please don't judge me. SO....long winded reason why the Natick did not last that long.
My other hold up was 14D - It may be in the low 90's - I threw in OLDAGE and could not let it go - the "O" was right, the "A" was right, and the "E" was right - so I figured a braleled was some obscure piece of jewelry I didn't know about...that one took a bit of time before OCTANE finally clicked.
Some nice, elegant long ones for a Tuesday and not much junk at all. Adrianne - thank you for a very fresh and pleasant ride!
Fue un error por mi parte.
Perfectly lovely Tuesday except that southwest corner. Did anyone else struggle with that GOHAM thing? π I made it worse like a few others with I'M SO GONE. But all is forgiven since Clare posted a spooky dog photo.
I looked at maybe 1000 photos of ZEBRA COLTS today. Cute li'l buggers. SOFA FORT is also cute.
Isn't every cut or non-cut that isn't a bob an alternative to a bob?
People: 12 {yeeshk ... that's surprising}
Places: 1
Products: 3
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 of 78 (32%)
Funny Factor: 1 π€¨
Tee-Hee: PORN {This puzzle might require age verification in Arizona where they're "protecting children" from this kind of menace.}
Uniclues:
1 I'd like to hear, "Sorry."
2 The Tao of Lotion.
3 Doodler on your ham at the ham and egg birthplace.
4 A box of Oreos secretly swiped from the pantry for later tonight.
5 What I do most days while solving crosswords.
6 An exhausted, "Tada."
7 Grampa's racy magazines hidden in the attic.
1 TERM SIRI OWES
2 ALOE ONSET PATH
3 OMELET BAR INKER
4 SOFA FORT IRA
5 SIT SOBBING
6 MERLIN: "I'M SO DONE."
7 ETHER PORN LODE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Inkers' crown. OCTOPUSES' TIARA.
¯\_(γ)_/¯
That's that party. Don't say a bad word!
Long time to go without your cogent analysis and unwavering positivity! Have a wonderful trip.
Hello Red and Banjo. Happy Halloween!!
Just read Rex Really liked just post today
John Nance Garner was VP in FDR’s first terms. Hus most famous quote was
“The vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm (spit) “ That is how it is usually quoted but there is reason to believe he actually said another bodily fluid.
Oops. The comment about Garner was from me DGD Adding that apparently he wasn’t consoled much by being vp.
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