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Spinning ring, informally? / FRI 10-24-25 / Number discovered in the 1500s / Fictional sidekick on a donkey / Plan B, for seniors / Where the monster and Frankenstein cross paths, in "Frankenstein" / Dismayed reaction to a tag / Clarence ___, "The Wire" mayor / Synthetic oil producer?
Friday, October 24, 2025
Constructor: Kelvin Zhou
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: LASH-UP (55A: Makeshift arrangement) —
noun informal1.a hastily made or arranged device, organization, etc.2.any improvised arrangement (Collins Dictionary)
• • •
The puzzle was trying to get vague and tricky right from the jump, with PARER (a word I hate, mostly because it's a potentially brutal Wordle or Quordle word—you have to really force yourself to remember "R" can go in PA-ER, and add at to "P" and "G" and "L" and probably "V") (see also CORER, another kitchen implement, another pain-in-the-ass word). I wanted CIDER here. CIDER is nicer on every level than CORER. CIDER is also nicer than EDUCE, oof, that's a word only a crossword could love (14A: Draw forth). Lots of trouble getting READY SET GO because "READ" looked like a standalone word so somehow I thought the "starting line" was maybe the "starting line" of instructions, like "READ ... ME FIRST?" or something like that (5D: Starting line at a starting line). STICKER SHOCK is a nice answer, though that ambiguous "tag" really got me (20D: Dismayed reaction to a tag). It's baseball season after all—the World Series starts today—so I thought it was that kind of "tag." I loved "I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU?"—easily the best thing in the grid—both because it's a great colloquialism and because it deliberately breaks the rule about not using clue words that are also in the answer (namely, "Can") (37A: Snarky reply to a question that starts "Can I...?"). Constructor: "Can I break that rule?" Snarky Editor: "I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU?" The snark comes from the fact that technically, the questioner should be using "may," not "can." The latter is a question of ability, the former a question of permission. Love a big slab of pedantic snark smack in the middle of my grid.
The hardest part for me was probably the NE. I figured when I got SAFETY up in there, things would just open up, but no. I thought Frankenstein ran into his monster in the Arctic, so ALPS took some doing (6A: Where the monster and Frankenstein cross paths, in "Frankenstein"). Parsing PR TEAM, rough (8D: Spinning ring, informally?). PARACHUTE wasn't too hard, but somehow ART FORGER was. Oh, and THREE PIN, yeesh, just an arbitrary pin number? And no bowling context in the clue? Tough. But I got through, without ever getting completely bogged down, so that makes it probably a pretty normal Friday puzzle, difficulty-wise, in the end.
Bullets:
- 17A: Fictional sidekick on a donkey (PANZA) — I know at least some of you wanted SHREK, even though he's not a "sidekick." Something about "Fictional" and five letters and Donkey (who was the sidekick) screamed SHREK. But no, it's Don Quixote's sidekick, Sancho PANZA
- 41A: Thai money (BAHT) — a gimme except that I always want to spell it BHAT. Always.
- 42A: Returns home? (IRS) — tax returns!
- 43A: Spread followers (BETTORS) — oh, the betting spread. How many points a team is favored by in a given game. You can bet on a team that wins but you still end up losing the bet because the winning team was favored by 7 points and failed to cover the spread (e.g. only won by 3).
- 53A: Number discovered in the 1500s (ETHER) — now this trickery I saw right through. Cluing ETHER as "number" (i.e. something that numbs) is about as old as cluing a river as a "flower" (i.e. something that flows).
- 60A: Clarence ___, "The Wire" mayor (ROYCE) — even if you watched The Wire, you could be forgiven for forgetting this name. He only appeared in seasons 3 and 4. These tertiary characters in bygone TV shows ... you can see how annoying (and trivial-seeming) they'd be if you never watched the show. The Wire ended its run 17 years ago now.
[Rose ROYCE]
- 9D: Plan B, for seniors (SAFETY SCHOOL) — really thought this was something to do with Medicare, which is probably by design.
- 16D: Derivative of sin (COS) — "Sin" here is the abbr. of the trigonometric function "sine." COS = "cosine."
- 44D: Chest: Prefix (STETHO-) — huge "d'oh!" moment for me here, as I confidently wrote in STERNO- (you know, because your STERNUM protects your "Chest"). PATRIOTIC forced a change (56A: Flag-waving, say), but I only changed the one letter and so had STETNO. That "N" really really made TCHOTCHKE (a hard word to begin with) hard to see (61A: Bobblehead, e.g.).
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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124 comments:
Lol I hit just about exactly the same speedbumps as you did.
Except that for me STERNO changed to STERHO because tchotchke didn't throw me but i somehow managed to type in PATRIORIC
Very challenging for me, DNF. Mostly due to the entire NE and mASH-UP at 53A. Because of the latter, I thought 9D's plan B would be some sort of rOOm. Good puzzle, but so far off my wavelength I can't even start to list overwrites and WOEs.
Tough one! I really enjoyed the cluing and was surpised by how quickly I got some weird ones. EDUCE is a word I got fast and actually like! I also strongly preferred CIDER and found LASHUP to be weak. However, I struggled mightily and ended up using the checker on LIMBO/BETTORS/OUST. Somehow my brain forgot the word bettors even exists :(
On 2 hours sleep myself, I had a very similar experience, especially regarding LASHUP. After about 45 minutes I still had a bunch of whitespace in the NE. PANZA & ECZEMA, READYSETGO & ITSMYTREAT all in place, confident of PEPSI, but I really wanted CIDER, and really did not want PARER, so I made breakfast & resumed my insomnia watch of John Sayles' Lone Star for half an hour. When I came back, RUNES made itself apparent, then SPEEDS, and, fine, PARER it is. ADAPT clue also a bit frustrating, definitely wanted something more passive, and finally EDUCE. I had wanted EVINCE which of course doesn't fit & felt there was a similar word I was blanking on, indeed, only a word a crossword could love.
Embarrassing effort from me. Could not get a foothold at all. When SANCHO didn’t fit I even Googled his last name to try to get a jump start, but PANZA didn’t give me much. Just never got going and got the rare time significantly slower than average.
It was the snarky reply that finally gave me a moment of whoosh - it was hard to trust the CAN repeated from the clue, but what else could it be? I put it in with virtually no crosses; without it, I don’t think I’d have had the patience to finish.
It wasn't just you, this was definitely a slog.
I'm with OFL. Lash-up is ridiculous. I wanted cider until the bitter end. Otoh, I read LOTR fifty years ago but somehow had runes. Nevertheless, I liked this one!
Oh yes. “Mwah!” squared. Pinnacle puzzle. What I hope for.
Where when I look at the finished grid, there is hardly an unknown word, but to get from the blank grid to that finished grid, you have to get through a barricade of riddles. Where the brain has to go sideways, has to imagine, has to explore for treasure. Where pings of pleasure await, one after another.
Where the puzzle is not a test of knowledge, but a workout (sweat) and a work-out (unravel mysteries). Where wordplay reigns. I marked 15 clues as special – the highest, I believe, I’ve ever marked for a puzzle this size.
There is talent behind the making of this, and when the constructor indicates in his notes that he is working on more – well, that is most exciting to me.
More, please, Kelvin, and more like this dazzling debut, please. I loved this. Thank you, sir!
Addenda:
• I can’t believe this is the first time STICKER SHOCK has appeared in the 80+ years of the NYT crossword.
• Lovely to see a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (PORTS).
I still don’t understand the clue for safety school. Can someone please explain it?
Yes; medium seems right. I had no problem with L:ASHUP but then I grew up in Britain. I did actually wonder if LASHUP would be correct, on the grounds that I didn't think the NYT uses Britishisms w/o a transAtlantic hint.
19 minutes for me this morning, pretty good struggle! Figured out it was a "SCHOOL" but wanted bAckup and couldn't think of SAFETY until almost the end. ART FORGER also was tough to see--I don't really think of that as synthetic--kept thinking about acne or pimples or something there. Loved seeing STICKERSHOCK in the grid today, thanks, @Lewis, for pointing out the debut. ASIA and ECIG and BAHT and (somehow I remembered) ROEG this time helped me get down into the bottom, STENOPOOLS dropped right in. Saw the clue at 29A and immediately thought "Looks like MYSPACE" but didn't put it in because... it seemed so unlikely. But there it is . Agree with @REX about PARER--wanted cidER first. Put in the MAJ at 24 A right away--you figure that "Spring" is not going to be in a minor key, right????, just had to wait for the E to appear. Anyway--really great Friday, good challenge, thanks Kelvin!!!! : )
I can understand Rex’s take that the cluing was a little strained - it was but I kind of liked it. It took a few minutes to get in the groove but once it fell it cleared a lot of things up. The central spanner is top notch.
It’s Everly Time
THREE PIN, SKATE PARKS, READY SET GO all solid longs. NATTER ON is just goofy enough be likable. ART FORGER and BETTORS could have been refined more.
Nimrodel
Enjoyable solve on this beautiful Friday morning.
Howard Devoto
Medium, you say, Rex? For me this was a toughie, well over my average time. And an interesting, challenging time it was. Plenty of tricky but fair clueing, just about all leading to familiar words, as Lewis points out, but in far-from-obvious ways. Felt like a Saturday, which is fine by me.
Last letter in today: K, fixing the c in ERIKA, where the name crosses a hard-to-spell word. Grr.
Hard to stay awake through this one. My eyes started to go half-mast when I saw RUNES crossing PANZA. I also got the sense that the clues had crossed the line and were intentionally trying to deceive rather than witty misdirection (the non-bowling bowling clue would be a good example, and Rex mentioned some others).
There were quite a few other answers that would come in handy on an insomniac evening - those music terms like EMAJ really can be anything, and who cares. MYSPACE is basically internet roadkill. The section with ROYCE, KLEIN, LUCIA and LASHUP should have had an OH, NO! instead of an OH YES.
I believe TCHOTCHKE has been used as a clue or answer at least once previously this year. I remember thinking that it is basically a synonym for junk, so Bobblehead is certainly a valid clue for that one. Enjoy your Friday - I’m off to find some caffeine somewhere.
Has MASHUP initially, as well. Great tricky cluing!
Loved the ETHER clue, didn’t get it until I read OFL’s write up. But I was thinking it would be like a Monty Python script if the number was like eight — up until that point everyone just skipped from seven to nine and couldn’t quite figure out why that didn’t feel right…
quite challenging. clues were devious.
Top two thirds, this was a perfectly normal puzzle. Then it all fell apart in the last few rows with KLEIN, ROYCE, and ERIKA.
ERIKA is puzzleworthy, just not for that particular role. The other two are pretty ridiculous.
that was brutal. looked up about 1/3 of the answers.
Hey All !
Epic fail in NE for me today. Ended up with mARACHiT?, and no idea of what it could possibly be. Those crazy Beatles with their YER Blues (I'm sure I've heard the song, but the name is s mystery), plus RIG 100% correct for its clue (Throw, maybe [as in you RIG a game}), and bam, DNF. AMA, APA, AwhateveryousayA. Yeesh.
SAFETY SCHOOL also an unknown here. You can berate me about "how the heck could you not know that?" like I did the other day with EBRAKE. I apologize to everyone, apparently it's not well known.
Who came up with the word TCHOTCHKE? Was it a torture device? Har. I had ArE instead of ACE, with TrHOTCHKE. BAH(T)!
Great clue for ART FORGER. Whoever came up with that one, kudos!
Q, V, X from The Gram.
A @Gary tee-hee: TIT.
Can you have great Friday? I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU? 😁
One f
RooMonster
DarrinV
Did Frankenstein and the monster "find a stranger in the alps?" Asking as a Big Lebowski fan.
After blowing through last Saturday's puzzle in near single digits it was back to normal last night. It took me 41 minutes to get through today's offering on my phone.
I finished up by backfilling the NE. This was a perfect segue to Thursdays SB if you recall the pangram.
Classic xword riddle clues for PARACHUTE and ARTFORGER. Clues like those and a fair amount of unknowns kept me chugging along on this solve at a much more of a tough Saturday pace.
Plan A, e.g., for a (high school) senior might be Harvard. Plan B might be UMass, their “safety school.”
ADOPT before ADAPT (which both work), then remembered PANZA for the save.
STETHA before STETHO, then remembered KOAN.
Truly tortured clueing today, requiring a bit more focus. Always enjoy seeing TIT to start the weekend, even if it’s a 54D Small songbird. TGIF, all!
Had ALAB before ALPS.
My experience closely matched Rex's, except that I had had a normal amount of sleep for me (which tbh is probably not enough). The NW was the hardest region. Misdirection up to the gills, ART FORGER and SAFETY SCHOOL and PR TEAM being some of the trickiest to see. (And there's LASHUP below, lol.) Not that this is a bad thing! In fact, the clues were well-designed for a nontrivial Friday. I would place it a hair above Medium in difficulty, based on my time.
Thanks to RP for explaining THREE PIN. And also ETHER. (I can be such a numbskull sometimes.) ECIG took a curiously long time: it's an odd combination of letters. With that I backed into RAIN, and that too I found was trickily clued.
I had forgotten that KLEIN cofounded Vox. Confound it, my main association with him now is his making the rounds with his book Abundance; the less said about that, the better.
I've been meaning to revisit ROEG's The Man Who Fell To Earth. I fear there's a good chance I'd be disappointed, but I was impressed when I saw it in my late teens.
Anyway, thanks for the ride, Kelvin Zhou! Happy Friday, all!
Like a backup you apply to if Harvard rejects you
High school “seniors” often apply to many colleges, some as their primary choices, some as a “just gotta make sure I get in somewhere” schools (i.e., a “Plan B”). These schools are often derisively referred to as SAFETYSCHOOLS. (Source: me, who went to a school he considered a “safety” and not only got a great education, but benefitted from said school’s steady rise in the national rankings over the past 30 years, to the point where no one considers it a safety school any longer. Also, I now HAVE a senior whose early applications are due in eight days. Eek.)
When I started this puzzle, it felt like a Saturday to me. It’s the kind of puzzle I really felt good about solving. I had to look up how to spell tchotchke, but outside of that, the rest of it I did without any help.
Gotta disagree
Not knowledge?
Royce,Klein,Roeg,Erika,koan,MySpace,Runes…..
Lots of facts…Proper names …tough.
Where your concerned children send you when they worry that you are losing your ability to drive safely.
Safe school is the expression.
Never heard anyone say “safety”
I believe if you’re a senior in high school you apply to safety unis in case you don’t get into the uni you really want.
High school seniors apply to "safe" schools they know they can get into if they are rejected by their first choices.
Great point. I put the M in right away but hesitated on MAJ or MIN. You're right about Spring though. Related: I did try out MAJ but then entered JUDAS as the down clue. Oops!!
Did not enjoy this at all. Also, I work in a corporation with a PR Dept and no one would ever refer to it as a "ring." So many clues that were inapt.
Anonymous 858 has it backwards. It’s 100% of the time “SAFETY SCHOOL,” never “SAFE”
First true DNF in a long time for any day of the week, including Saturday. Could not figure out the whole North section. cidER was rude because it was such the right answer to that clue, and PARER is awful in comparison. SAFETY SCHOOL is the perfect answer, but even with the "...TY SCHOOL" in place I could not figure it out. And the clues were too tough on the other big answers. Had TRAY but that was kinda it. Bad day.
Now granted, I quit vaping years ago, but last I checked, ECIGs do in fact have filters.
Loved the cluing. Great puzzle. Just didn’t enjoy LASH-UP.
plan a: good school, quality education, might reject you.
plan b: yale. or duke.
Excellent, tricky cluing...for TRAYS, ARTFORGER, SKATEPARKS, and especially SAFETY SCHOOL...and also PRTEAM, which I just couldn't get. Also didn't know "YER Blues," had Rig for "Throw" instead of RUG, didn't get ALPS...so the whole NE made it a DNF for me. Darn! Felt like a Saturday puzzle for sure.
I started out thinking 'what a slog' then gained "some" momentum (with cheating :( WOES- LASH-UP, THREE PIN, spelling of TCHOTCHKE (I know it's Friday but really??). I did, however, like PR TEAM, ETHER & IRS.
Congrats on your debut, Kelvin
(Can't help adding - I miss a RobynW Friday!).
Wow, just wow. I haven't needed that much time to solve a Friday in, I think, decades. I did it on paper so I don't know for sure but I'm guessing the NE took 3/4 of the time.
SAFETY SCHOOL, never heard of it.
Like Rex, I thought the monster and Frankenstein were at the POLE, or on a SHIP or anywhere but the ALPS. (Actually, I considered, off the initial A, that 28A would be ALPS before ASIA made much more sense.)
Stupid S that I threw in at the end of 21A, anticipating the plural of the clue, made sure I didn't see THREE. That might have helped PARACHUTE to open a tad sooner.
Kelvin Zhou, you got me! At least I didn't have to cheat though it was becoming very tempting.
Yo invito.
I adored this puzzle. So stinking difficult for me and so many answers only made sense after the struggle bus let me out on the curb having been beaten by the bullies in the back. Such a funny puzzle too. A rare clown award. When I first started crosswording, I would have hated a puzzle like this, but now I look forward to them.
Pretty sure I didn't know any of the trivia answers except Sancho Panza so that made it doubly difficult. I am listening to Don Quixote on my way back and forth to work and since the library only has one copy and it's 60 hours long I have to return it after 21 days and then get back in line for it to become available again. It'll probably take a year to finish at this rate. I am okay with that. The dude reading it is brilliant. I'm interspersing it with other titles and right now it's A Brief History of Time by Hawking. Battling windmills is way better than science.
❤️ [It helps with server loads]. [Opener for an aerial act]. ART FORGER. [Silly ones]. I DON'T KNOW, CAN YOU? TCHOTCHKE. STICKER SHOCK. NATTER ON.
People: 7
Places: 4
Products: 4
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 of 70 (34%)
Funny Factor: 14 🤡
Tee-Hee: SKIRTS. [Plan B, for seniors] {eww}. TIT.
Uniclues:
1 Sends in the Border collies.
2 Send the notators to lunch.
3 Christmas presents?
1 SPEEDS GEESE
2 OUST STENO POOLS
3 YER JESUS SPEND
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Who I become when I hear we're planning a dinner party. CAN WE NOT BOY.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OFL is exactly right when he said Plan B for seniors would have me thinking of health insurance, as we spent yesterday finding an entirely new plan, as our previous excellent coverage is no longer offered where we live. We came up with something only marginally more expensive--good luck to everyone in this situation.
Hard getting started, IDONTKNOWCANYOU offered a lot of toeholds. MASHUP had to be right except for the SCHOOM cross. Reluctantly changed it to LASHUP, which made more sense.
The riddle clues and the unknown propers made this tough, and never being able to spell TCHOTCHKE did not help. Is flag waving PATIRIOTIC? Sometimes. AVERTS before SKIRTS and RIG before RUG were the biggest roadblocks.
Congrats on the debut, KZ. Sort of like a reverse Zen KOAN, of a KZ, in that there were answers but they were properly mysterious. Thanks for all the hard-earned fun.
I'm surprised that there were no comments about COS being "Derivative of sin." Lots of us have taken calculus, I guess.
Today, there were a lot of entries which are sort of reverse gimmes. A gimme is one where you first understand the clue and then you immediately see the entry. A reverse gimme is one where you first immediately see the entry from crosses and then you understand the clue. There were 18 of them for me today. Notably ARTFORGER, PARACHUTE, ETHER, PEPSI, PRTEAM.
Well, yesterday I expressed a wish for a challenging Friday and I got it. No “whoosh” for me. Just a lot of plugging away until it was done. Most of the trouble came through the vague or tricky clues. But it was good. I need one of these every once in a while. I don’t time myself but I feel like I finished this in over average Friday time, so medium difficult. Can’t say it was fun, but it was solid.A good workout. No real complaints …
Except 37A I DON’T KNOW, CAN YOU? for “Can I?” I don’t know how else you’d deal with it - I mean CAN is essential to both questions - but the blatant dupe just rattled me at first. But it's too good an answer to stay mad at it.
Loved TCHOTCHKE at 61A. And some of the other long entries like ITS MY TREAT (22A), and ART FORGER (18A). Good clues on both.
Thanks, Kelvin.
Not a torture device, but it may seem so if you don't know the word. From the Yiddish TZATZKEH meaning toy or trinket, it came to be pronounced TCHOTCHKE in English.
Rediculously clued. I'll avoid puzzles by this constructor in the future.
Frankenstein is one of Aimee Mann’s best songs. Thanks for including it today!
Just throwing my hat in the ring to agree this puzzle was tortuously clued, mostly in a good way in hindsight. Some things just didn’t click—for example, I had ECXEMA and READYSETGO before even thinking of PEPSI. And missed TCHOTCHKE even though I have lived in NYC and have boxes of the stuff ready for a garage sale one of these years. Also fell for the old “number” trick like I’d never seen it before. And ROYCE? Could picture the character but not is name…that was a real trivia question…Anyway, kudos to the solvers who made it through this one unscathed. Well, sounds like the kind of Saturday a lot of folks were asking for…
Tough. The west side was easier than the east which put up a lot of resistance. In the east APLS, KLIEN and ROYCE (and I’ve watched “The Wire” twice) were WOEs…SKATE PARKS, LASH UPS, PR TEAM, SAFTEY SCHOOL, THREE PIN, and ROEG required some crosses…tough!
Costly erasures - averTS before SKIRTS and EvokE before EDUCE.
An unusually crunchy Friday, some of the clueing was reminiscent of Croce’s puzzles, liked it.
I agree with you, Lewis. A great, tough Friday puzzle, more challenging than medium for me. It felt like a classic Friday puzzle from about ten years ago, as Fridays have seemed easier to me these last few years. I never got stuck, but it took a while and it was fun
Ditto what RP said. I could feel my feet sinking into the muck right from the very beginning. And yes, I promptly plunked down SHREK at 17A. Practically every clue was a struggle, some of them brutal like spinning ring for PR TEAM. Count me among those who never heard of LASHUP which added to the empty space where ROYCE, KLEIN, ROEG and BAHT would’ve been if I’d known them. I finally had to Google most of the names to get anywhere. A challenging Friday for sure but not much fun, at least not for me.
I loved this puzzle, more or less for the reasons Rex didn't--extremely tricky clues that made it hard but rewarding to solve. My first entry was TRAY, partly because I couldn't think of any computer things that were 4 letters; then it was confirmed by the beautifully clued ATE. That brought me to EDUCE, a word I'd like to use more often (I'm teaching an intro class this semester, and always trying to EDUCE a response from the students). That made me think of PEPSI but I didn't put it in because I wanted cidER (like everyone else, apparently).
The toughest part was 5-D, where I confidently wrote in "on your mark," with every single letter wrong. Boy, did that hold me up. I've always heard "get ready, get set, go!" which didn't fit, so I had to get the GO from crosses to see the abridged line.
Scariest part was 6-A where I had the A from APA and couldn't figure out what it could be except maybe A LAB--which would have been horrible. I've never actually read the book, so I had to on on plausibility.
I'm no Zen expert, but from what I know, I don't think a KOAN is a riddle. Riddles have answers; "What is the sound of one hand clapping" has none.
I enjoy a challenge, but this whole puzzle just felt like an effort to applaud its creator for his cleverness. I'm not here for anyone's entertainment but my own.
It's like safety pin, but with a school.
I really enjoyed grappling with this one, with its fun-to-write-in TCHOTCHKE, STICKER SHOCK, STENO POOL, and SAFETY SCHOOL and its cleverly slanted cluing. PARACHUTE, ART FORGER, and THREE PIN eluded me for a long time, giving me visions of a DNF in the NE, but a guess at APA gave me what I needed to finish. I'd love more Fridays like this one.
I spent yesterday doing the same thing. Although my premium is going up $45 a month, I’m thankful I can keep my plan and consider myself one of the lucky ones.
Very happy to finish this without cheating, but it took forever. I had "I'm not hearing you" instead of IDONTKNOWCANYOU, which makes far more sense. I needed an alphabet run at the end to get the PANZA/RUNES cross, because I didn't know Apple made a PARER (or were they talking about the fruit?). Very hard, compared to recent Fridays.
NW was brutal for me until i changed corer to PARER. Helps if you know who Panza is.
UMass is no longer a SAFETYSCHOOL, even for Mass. residents.
Needed two cheats to finish. I can look at Rex's top row and keep everything else hidden, so I cheated on ALPS and TRAY (already had the left side finished.) Would this spring the puzzle free for me? It did, though not easily.
Writeovers: aveRTS before SKIRTS for "sidesteps." ERA before CEN for the 1900s. STERNO before STETHO for chest. RIG before RUG for "throw, maybe." Some sort of KEY before THREE PIN (I was thinking of a keyboard and not bowling pins.) LIMit before LIMBO for the kind of bar that's tough to pass.
And I was thinking of Medicare supplements for "Plan B for seniors."
What a brilliant, if nasty clue for SAFETY SCHOOL. Another brilliant clue/answer for STICKER SHOCK.
A really devious puzzle that was calculated to fool and bamboozle everyone. Some world-class clues. ART FORGER is great, too, only that one I saw. But I couldn't finish this puzzle without cheating and I wish I could say IT'S MY TREAT. But it wasn't a treat because I suffered too much.
Brutal for me, a DNF. Most of the same problems as Rex and others: cider first, EDUCE (really?), LASHUP, which I have never heard and would never have guessed.
For a British mechanic lash up no problem, done hundreds. Also Rex, as is bodge, bodged up & bodger (about the worst insult you can hurl at a professional wrencher)
Had to look up the spelling of tchotchke & eczema, lot of guesses Royce, Klein, erika,
stetho. Wanted cider for the longest time. Best answer today, artforger. It's just not where my head goes on a clue involving synthetic oil.
Great puzz!
Funny, top third was the biggest struggle for me.
63 across is incorrect as entered in the puzzle… should be alan
Adding to my list of writeovers in my yet-to-appear comment: MASHUP before LASHUP.
I had slab
DNF. Got about 3/4 and then couldn’t complete it. I definitely thought this was a Saturday level puzzle.
Took me quite a while to abandon STATEPARKS, which, given the high level of misdirection in the clues, seemed quite plausible as "Locales with many banks", since many are at lakes and rivers and the like.
That led me to STARTS for "Sidesteps", which, again, given the level of misdirection, seemed plausible-ish as, for instance, a center fielder's typical first step in tracking down a line drive, or perhaps an unfamiliar pickleball term.
All that was left to complete the grid was THREEPAN for "It's on the right in the second row", which, yet again, given the overall level of misdirection, seemed quasi-plausible as, perhaps, some kind of The Bear type of kitchen code for a pan location on a standard professional burner layout.
I was all solved! And yet I wasn't.
Yeah, that took me a while to find. That is kind of the problem when the clues get as tricky as this -- it really EDUCES a lot of other plausible answers. OK, I won't NATTER ON any longer.
OK. Yep. Even tougher than the WedPuz. Mostly cuz of the many many extra-sneaky clues, plus the LASHUP/ROYCE/KLEIN/LUCIA SE's mostly no-know corner, plus TCHOTCHKE/ERIKA/KOAN in the SW.
staff weeject pick: COS, with its sin-fully mathematically sneaky clue. Runner-up is RUG, which also had a nice, confusion-centric clue.
Primo weeject stacks, NE & SW, btw.
lotsa faves, includin especially: ARTFORGER & clue. PARACHUTE & clue. ITSMYTREAT & clue. READYSETGO & clue. Plus also the clues for: THREEPIN. SAFETYSCHOOL. PRTEAM. LARGE.
Day-um...What a work-out!
Thanx, Mr. Zhou dude. Yer puz had a lotta stuck-har-shock, for the likes of m&e. And congratz on yer crafty debut, you clever rascal.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
... and now, to go out on a limb ...
"Has a Leg Up" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Same for me with JUDAS. I knew I wouldn't be the only one...
Hahaha I can see it now!
@RooMonster 8:32 AM
We've had scads of American bushtits in our backyard on their way south from summering up north and I've handled the situation with my characteristic maturity.
Great puzzle! A real struggle but delightful that so many answers provided a satisfying Oho! I’m happy that I stuck with it.
I was thinking "Back to School" with Rodney Dangerfield for the Plan B for seniors. I knew it wasn't of course, but it made me chuckle.
As a math person, never even thought of any other meaning of "derivative" and "sin". As a biwler,
Bowler, the THREEPIN was obvious.
@Roo. I think TCHOTCHKE is Yiddish, and quite lovely.
Bear in mind that the NYTXW editorial team has a lot to do with the cluing, sometimes to the point where most of the cluing is not due to the constructor.
This started horribly slow for me; I got to the lower right with only a few answers filled in (several of them wrong, as it turned out), then turned around and worked back upwards and made a little progress, then back down for a little more. Funny how that works sometimes! Just over 20 minutes so challenging for me. Very tricky clues, but many were fun to work out.
One not fun part was that lower right area with the mashup (not lashup) of names: ROEG LUCIA ROYCE KLEIN. Never heard of those last two. That was almost as bad as yesterday's upper right.
For 14 across "Draw forth" I initially had EVOKE which made for EKZEMA at 4 down. I thought: is that how it's spelt? Then I noticed KZ is the constructor's initials so I thought maybe he did it deliberately.
And SAFETY SCHOOL reminds me of a neat little park in my neighborhood which features a Safety Village. It has a bunch of little roads, little buildings, and even street lights and stop signs, so kids can drive their bikes or little cars. It's also a very popular rental for birthday parties!
Tricky, humorous, doable - lots of fun! More please!
Surprised, but not surprised by the number of people who wanted cider at 1A. If my wife an I find ourselves eating at a pub - maybe lunch with my brother who seems to thrive on beer and burgers - she will scan the menu for ciders because she can't abide beer. Lots of choices, usually, because we have lots of orchards around here and lots of crafty brewer types. Sometimes she can even find a pear cider (perry). But that's about the only time we drink it. I wanted something computer related there, then corer, and then parer.
As for Plan B and
Parer does NOT equal Apple product. If so you could clue hammer as wood product, wrench as car product and an infinite number of nonsensical pairings. If the answer was corer it would hate it marginally less since corers are almost exclusively used on apples but paring knives can be used on almost all fruits, legs, and meats
Well, hopefully tomorrow's will be the one today should have had?
Wrote “on your mark” which hamstrung me in the NW for quite a while!
Even though my only overwrite was STATEPARKS to SKATEPARKS, I found this puzzle to be *very* hard for a Friday- far more like a Saturday with all the punny/misdirecting clues.
With that said, I really enjoyed it and was happy to get the "congratulations" screen without the "something's wrong" screen.
I knew IDONTKNOWCANYOU immediately and it was one of my favorite answers to enter in a looooooong time.
Somehow I hit Publish while still typing. As I was saying Plan B SAFETY SCHOOL was unknown to me. I entered university in the early 70s by accident. I was totally adrift, directionless, no plan whatsoever when I went to visit my girlfriend (now my wife of over 50 years) who had moved to Victoria to study theatre at the university there. I gleaned from an area map that there was a Fine Arts building and thought I'd try to find her there. No cell phones in 1971, though I had called her on the telephone (doesn't that sound archaic?) to tell her I might be in town. So I wandered through the building, puzzled by the lack of a theatre until, as I was passing an open doorway, someone asked, "Can I help you?". I stopped and met a most marvellous man, John Dobereiner, head of the art department, who invited me into his office for a chat and a coffee and eventually asked me about the camera I was carrying. He asked and I showed him some photos I had in my bag. "Can you put together a portfolio? And find a high school transcript? And come see me in two weeks?"
"Um, I guess so".
"Great, now I'll tell you how to get to the Theatre Department and find your girlfriend."
And that's how I got into university. There were a few snags. I had to do a few summer make-up courses at a local college. Then I had to meet the Dean and sign a document promising I would never ever try to graduate as anything but an art student. This may explain why I'm not a physicist.
So, in the late 60s, early 70s, did anyone have a Plan A or Plan B? Or, like me, was it common to have no plan at all.
Me too, Judas
@Nancy. I love your use of the word "nasty" here. "Yeah," I thought, "Delightfully nasty."
Same here, fooled by temptation to stick with rOOm. I solve on my phone, and I just kept watching the seconds tick by. Got a few filled in after the first pass, and from that point on it very slowly gave me one clue, then another, then another. Worst time on Friday ever, 1:06, but I refused to google and was eventually rewarded. NE definitely the hardest. Very satisfying to finish.
I also had a lab at first
This makes up for the string of ridiculously easy Fridays.
Silly GEESE gather in their gaggle to NATTER ON about a new TCHOTCHKE in their respective collections, each with an ECIG dangling from their beaks.
I experienced bit of a struggle in spots and I think a couple clues needed just a dash more hint. LASHUP is the one most in need of - help, maybe “across the pond?” However, the excellent clue for SAFETY SCHOOL gave me a reason to correct my mASHUP. No harm no foul.
Names gave me trouble. As a fan of “The Wire,” I could see Mayor ROYCE in my mind but pulling that name out? Not until I had most of the crosses. Fell right into the misdirect trap with Shrek at first. Should I admit how much I love those movies and bought them all? Just did, so what?
For some reason, my first instinct for director Nicholas ROEG is always ROEn, so that’s a me problem - just like remembering how to spell TCHOTCHKE. But I love the word! So perfectly descriptive of all my “little nothings - that I just cannot seem to let go.
As it happened, the NW with its PARER/PEPSI corner was the very last to fall. Like OFL, I had cidER at first and thought it a superb answer. PARER is actually the only answer I thought painfully poor with a clue that said “I am making this hard just ‘cause.” Happily, things wuickly improved.
ART FORGER and SAFETY SCHOOL and their clues are my favorites today, although using synthetic to mean fake was an awfully big stretch. Still, this debut puzzle, as my über with-it and sooon to be teenage granddaughter would say “gave mega-Friday!” I have missed really good Friday puzzles for a while.
I look forward to our next challenge from worthy opponent and debut constructor (with several debut entries as well) Kelvin Zhou!
My Webster's unabridged doesn't indicate British, and their example is from Time. Kinda cheap-o still, I think.
Perseverance pays off almost every time in the Crossworld. I also had to work a little, read the news, go back etc. Sometimes it takes a while to connect to the constructor’s wavelength. The longer you solve, the less often you find you just cannot connect at all, or that you just flat don’t know something and there’s no help from the crosses.
I resisted the CAN repeat too, @anonymous 7:16 AM. SAFETY SCHOOL and SKATE PARKS gave me enough to allow the usually no-no “repeat.”
@Casimir 7:31 AM: My hubs was a Tolkien lover. On one of my quick work trips to London, I mentioned to a local colleague that I’d love to find a gorgeous early edition of either all the works or at least LOTR as a gift. He led me to Hatchards in Picadilly. In just a few months, they sourced me an early edition bound in red leather with gold embossing that had fold-out parchment maps with gorgeous lettering originally created by hand and equally beautiful calligraphed end papers. I cannot think of LOTR without instantly thinking of those beautiful RUNES.
@Liveprof (in response to @Mark re SAFETY SCHOOL). LOL @ “like a safety pin. . . !
@Anonymous 8:03 AM - nice turn of phrase to describe the clueing “trying to deceive rather than witty misdirection” - spot on!
To @Roo and @Gary J: you two are my guaranteed laugh producers “on the daily” as my granddaughter would say. @GJ, I do so appreciate your “characteristic maturity.”
Hard for me! Fell into the same traps that Rex and others fell into. “Love a big slab of pedantic snark smack in the middle of my grid” - laughed at this comment by Rex
Sounds like all of us elders are doing the same thing! Moving to California was like moving to another country. I have to change supplements to get treatment with the healthcare “system” that I need. Finished my research on providers finally and will tackle finding the right option tomorrow.
Tough one for me, but I did finish… Due to my age I couldn’t imagine senior Plan B having anything to do with anything other than Medicare. Also immediately filled in “on your Mark” Where “Ready set go” should’ve been
agreed with all the sticking points and clueing issues. piping in to add 47A OUST to the list... in the context of leaving, bounce is something you do, OUST is something you do to someone else. not a good clue! but too far down the list of issues to make a splash today I guess. 😂
@Les, I had a plan A, then a plan B, then C...
I did my first degree in Physics because I wanted to be a meteorologist. I went to UBC (Vancouver) because it was close to home and I could save a ton of money by doing my first two years at the college in my home town, a process called University Transfer.
Then I realized meteorology actually sounded kinda boring. I had top grades in my B.Sc., so I started a Master of Science at UBC. Soon realized I was in over my head so dropped out before the year was done.
Then thought architecture sounded really cool. Tried applying to the B.Arch program at UBC, but the guy who interviewed me said flat out: you're not suited for it. I was disgusted, then relieved when I was accepted to U. of Manitoba, where I had pretty much the best 4 years of my life.
Was an architect for 8 years before I realized I didn't like it either. (I guess the UBC guy was right!) Ended up doing computer animation (loved it!!!), then finally website programming/design which was even better. So: 9 years of university, two degrees; not using either one.
Anonymous 6:36 AM
My guess is LASHUP is British. Rex didn’t confirm it but no US cites and frequently appearing in the Economist. Is enough for me
A common term in Britain wouldn’t be a weak choice imo but tougherwithout a qualifier. Lashup somehow made sense so I lucked out
@Les S, I loved your story. Made me a bit weepy remembering my own college-meet-the-love-of-my-life experience.
After finding out that I didn’t get enough financial aid to go to Oberlin, a mere two weeks before school would start, I had to find a way to get away from home and be able to pay for college. So, I auditioned at Illinois-guaranteed admission as a state school. I called it desperation, but today it would be called Plan B: the SAFETY SCHOOL. It turned out well.
The day of my audition - a mere two days before registration, I followed a bunch of students to a coffee house a block from the music school. They invited me to sit. Among that group was a percussionist-my future husband, best friend and the love of my life. After two years of seeing each other every day, playing in university symphony, opera and various ensembles, we had exactly one date, moved in together and married the December we graduated. A very short 46 years later, he succumbed to complications from lupus. I thank the universe every day for Oberlin’s stinginess.
Anonymous 1:40 pm
I agree about lashup. Only use I found in the US is by railroad workers. I doubt it was ever in general use here.
@Dione Drew
Then why do they call the big guys who work at nightclubs and eject troublemakers BOUNCErs?
Rick Sacra
I took synthetic oil to mean fake paintings with real oil paint. Liked it when I got it BTW it this puzzle took me 3 times as long as you.
Anonymous 8:03 am
As someone pointed out a famous Vivaldi piece, Spring , part of the Four Seasons, is highly unlikely to be MIN. So to be fair to the puzzle, not so random. 3 of 4 letters.
tht
About number.
This is the third time I rememberedthis trick being played in the Times puzzle ( and a lot of other occasions) but somehow I forgot it. I got the answer and didn’t know why. Had to read Rex very Ouch.
Anonymous 9:22 AM
Ring is a trick clue. Like synthetic oil but I think informally is supposed to hint a trick. Perhaps is ? would be better.
But as a trick it is not inapt
"ECIG"??!!!
Really? The past two puzzles I have struggled with the clues. Today was a bit easier but still a bit wacko,..
I believe that the proper response to "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is to extend your hand, as if in friendship. I'm sure someone else here can tell me whether this is a legend or not.
@Dione Drew: I agree that Bounce for OUST was a bit of a stretch, but I have heard people use bounce to mean “cause you to leave- by force or dint of authority.” As JC66 comments, Bouncers do indeed OUST people. A boss might threaten a noncooperative employee by saying “You do this again and I’ll bounce you out of here.” Or, as a career public service employee friend of mine who became - as she said - “politically unemployed” after an election replaced her boss with an elected official not of the same party as her former boss. Over adult beverages the day of her sudden departure, she reminded me, “I told you he would bounce everyone over 50, especially women, and anyone not registered to vote the same party he does, and he did. On his first day in office.
THAT'S what "ECIG" means? I was absolutely 100% Natick'd by that one.
It wasn't you. It's the puzzle. When I can stop groaning, perhaps I'll be able to come up with a comment. Slog, however, works for me.
tht
As a professed math guy, COS was a gimmie. OTOH, I wracked my brain trying to figure out that NUMBER. I thought EULER? Wrong century. Then I remembered ETHER(net) 1536. So I thought, wow, that's arcane. It wasn't until I came here and found out my idea was complete BS. Also thought SAFETYSCHOOL was where you went to avoid a speeding ticket.
True Friday challenge for sure. What a welcome change - and a spectacular debut. Looking forward to seeing the next Kelvin Zhou for sure.
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