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Cognac label letters / THU 1-22-26 / Sporting flats, say / Pestering type / Mark’s successor / Kick butt, so to speak / Channel with the longtime slogan “We Know Drama” / Goddess depicted with cow’s horns / Prefix meaning “heavens,” as the name of a planet suggests / Band with the 2008 platinum single “Electric Feel” / Result of missing the boat / Tools requiring two people
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Constructor: Joe DiPietro
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: TRAFFIC / SIGNALS (11D: With 42-Down, they tell you when to stop and go … as seen in this puzzle’s theme)— the letters “STOP” and “GO” are replaced in the theme answers with “RED” and “GREEN,” respectively:
Theme answers:
Dear readers, my internet service provider is doing some kind of repairs or upgrade so service is out and I’m currently writing this on my phone (torture)… Oh look I can just do voice memo. Kuhl Kuhl, why is it writing out the name Kuhl and not the word Kuhl what a weird Choice. Anyway, I’ll write more later assuming my service comes back on. For now, I’ll just say that I did not care for this puzzle. At all. There’s gibberish in the grid, the theme answers themselves aren’t that interesting, and the fill is creaky throughout. And how many UPs are there in this grid anyway? Four? At least four. That’s an insane number of UPs. An illegal number I’d say. I knew the fill was gonna be a problem at STETTED (which is what happens when you turn the proofreading comment STET (i.e. “leave in”) into a past-tense verb, oof). TSK TSK. Also balked at VSOP VOCE, although now I think it sounds like a cool rapper’s name—he could open for A$AP ROCKY.
- COMEREDASS (“Comes to pass”) (18A: Happens)
- WORKINGREENNIT (“Working on it”) (27A: Tackling the task at hand)
- LOREDPORTUNITY (“Lost opportunity”) (45A: Result of missing the boat)
- XINGREENUT (“Xing out”) (56A: Striking through)
MGMT (/ɛm-dʒi-ɛm-tiː/) is an American rock band formed in 2002 in Middletown, Connecticut. It was founded as "The Management" by singers and multi-instrumentalists Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser. They later changed their name to "MGMT" in 2005. […]
On October 5, 2007, Spin named MGMT "Artist of the Day". In November Rolling Stonepegged MGMT as a top ten "Artist to Watch" in 2008 and went on to name Oracular Spectacular number 494 in their top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The band placed ninth in the BBC's Sound of 2008 Top Ten Poll. They were also named as Last.fm's most played new artist of 2008 in their Best of 2008 list. At the 51st Grammy Awards, the Justice remix of "Electric Feel" won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. The group was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and "Kids" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 52nd Grammy Awards. (Wikipedia)
• • •
More later, maybe. Or not, if the internet doesn’t cooperate. For now, I’m done writing on my phone. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Fire away in the comments if you like. See you later.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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15 comments:
I love this blog. I started using it to help find clues i was stuck on, but as I've gotten better, it's just a fun daily source of entertainment. I hope the internet issue gets resolved!
I thought the theme was cute but could have been better executed. I did not care for quite a few of the non- themed answers. That northwest corner was challenging but not in a fun way. It was overall okay for me.
It was verging on HARD for me, until I grokked the theme and then it was easy. Nothing great about this puzzle, really...
I got the red/green trick early but the puzzle was a slog anyway. Gibberish was unpleasant. Got STETTED right away too but just couldn’t bring myself to write it in. We just don’t say this.
Easy-Medium. Easy, once I got the gimmick.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
My wardrobe-less movie was a nudie before it was PORNO (16A)
WaKENed before WOKEN UP for Roused at 39D
WOEs:
PITSAW at 1D
The group MGMT (and its song, "Electric Feel") at 34A
STETTED (20A) is unfathomably ugly.
Good luck, @Rex. I hope your anger at your ISP "Kuhls" down.
TRAFFIC SIGNALS have three colors. I tend to like the concept here but the construct is disjoint. Agree with the big guy that there is some oddball fill throughout.
The Hanging Garden
The sub-theme here appears to be alcohol fueled - PINT, VSOP, RUM etc. i liked the split revealer and its placement. The STOP - GO replacement works but it is cumbersome.
Siamese Twins
It was enjoyable to grok - definitely a promising idea but not fully imagined. Where’s the amber?
The Figurehead
the abbreviated commentary seems appropriate; this is the first puzzle in a looong while that i didn’t finish. pretty ungainly throughout. somewhat ironically, i think it was GETUPSTEAM that made me tap out.
Have to agree on this one. The gimmick is fine but the shaded squares meant I could just fill them all in; no sense of discovery. I found little joy in the themers or fill.
20 minutes which is about my Thursday average but I enjoyed it less than usual.
Maybe I am just ANTSY with the ice storm coming?
Hate it.
STETTED? Really? I liked the theme. I can't hate a puzzle that reminds me of the EVERLY Brothers. I was another who put in "nudie" before PORNO. And this makes 2 days without a Star Wars reference.
Finished, but had to come here to grab COME RED ASS
I enjoyed this puzzle more than Rex did, and by half way through when I ran into things like STETTED I already knew Rex was having a bad time haha.. Took a bit to get into the style of cluing, although none of the answers themselves were particularly difficult (except URANO which I've never heard of). Not sure why I was so dense about the theme of replacing the colors with "go" and "stop" but I knew there were letters missing that didn't seem to affect anything around it, so I just charged through the puzzle.
I always glitch on Seth ROGEN vs. Joe RogAn until I remembered: "RogAn needs RogAine" 😎
Yeah.... can't figure out what my time was (the timer says like an hour and 40 minutes, but that's cuz I fell asleep for a while doing it late last night). I actually thought the colloquialisms in the NW corner, while the last to fall for me, were actually one of the more creative parts of the grid. ISITNOT? And this puzzle wanted to convince me "STETTED" is a word. NICETRY. But the downs in that corner were OK by me. GETUPSTEAM took me a long time to accept as well... I think of it as "buildUPSTEAM", but maybe GETUPSTEAM is OK. Agree that the revealer placement is the best thing about the grid, up and down like the red and green traffic lights. Speaking of lights--took me a while to see what the bottom word was going to be, but once I got that, the puzzle opened up for me. Enjoyed it more than @REX did--I'd give it 3 stars. MIXUP was nice. But we do have 3 UPs at the bottom of the grid, facing down. It's almost a little ironic subtheme. And all 4 of them face down. So quite consistent that way. Thanks, Joe, for keeping us entertained this morning!!! : )
For some strange reason, I have not enjoyed the recent puzzles, including today’s. I hope it’s not because I’m getting tired of them. The themes are blah and the fills are dopey.I DO enjoy the blog,
I'm an editor. I've heard it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not saying it's pretty.
Yeah, an awful puzzle, but it did inspire me to look up PIT SAW (a WOE) and watch some cool videos of old style lumbering. The obstacles people once faced, and the ingenious solutions they came up with!
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