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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 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)
• • •
[warning: profanity, weirdness]
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
P.S. well it's patchy, and currently slow as hell, but Internet appears to be back chez me. As some have noted, if I'd been thinking more clearly at Very Dark O'Clock in the Morning, I could've set up a hot spot with my phone and connected my laptop to the Internet that way. Ah well. Here are some of things I might've commented on had I been more alert and competent in the face of an Internet Emergency:
- NAH is not a "Hard pass" (30D: "Hard pass"). It's a casual, slangy, not particularly emphatic "no." "HELL NO" is a "hard pass."
- The clue on ETCH was head-shakingly weird (35A: Cut (in)). "ETCH in"??? What is that? "Cut in" and "ETCH in" are parallel phrases only if a lawyer gets involved. I guess the phrase "etched in stone" means "cut in(to) stone," but yeesh. "Cut in" is a dance term (as in "May I ___?")
- GET UP STEAM? You can work up a head of steam. You can get up to speed. But this? Unless you know a guy named Steam who has fallen, I can't see how this phrase is useful.
- I guess the SHOD clue is technically correct (6D: Sporting flats, say), but SHOD makes whoever is wearing the flats sound like a horse.
- URANO? Whoever you are, U R in NO position to be putting this in a puzzle. "Prefix" where/when? Unless you are a 17th-century star atlas enthusiast, I challege.
- And yes, as many of you have noted: COME RED ASS is hard to unsee. Lots going on there. Might be the highlight of the puzzle (put "high" in scare quotes, if you like).
I'll see you all tomorrow.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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134 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!
I wonder what the regional split is between people who call that third color 'amber', 'yellow', or 'orange'? I have friends that use each.
Quite sleepy while solving this, but it seemed pretty easy.
A little bit reminiscent of my all-time favorite Sunday puzzle of June 19, 2016.
Hand up for @Conrad's nudie before PORNO.
While filling this in, I:
• Tried hard to imagine a tool that took two people to use, and finally pictured the SAW. That felt good.
• Chuckled at [Sporting flats, say] for SHOD.
• Liked the funny-sounding SHOD, GLUT, and NOODGE.
• Let out a spontaneous inner “Hah!” when I saw the trick.
• Shook my head in shame for not getting INSECTS from [Bees, but not birds] sooner.
• Imagined scenes from “The Studio” after filling in ROGEN. That series made me laugh.
• Felt a flash of embarrassment from having no idea where ESTONIA is, looked it up, and now it’s a TIL.
Nice to see you, Joe, after a 2.5-year absence, and congratulations on your 142nd NYT puzzle. Thank you for a rich outing!
I’ve never once said “nah” for “hard pass.” “Nah” means “yeah, not really” in my book, and “hard pass” means “what part of no don’t you understand?”
De eso es de lo que estoy hablando.
Fun. Fast. Basic. The first theme entry COME RED ASS would have sealed the deal on this puzzle if our old fifth grader in charge of the slush pile was still around. I don't miss him.
Biggest challenge was wondering if it would be TICK or TOCK. I am reading a book where Nancy Drew was nearly blown up by a ticking time bomb so I am a little triggered by this. Her friend Helen was knocked out by blunt force trauma in the forest by a glowing white ghost the same night, so it's no laughing matter.
While the rest of the puzzle is essentially humorless, the three "better than that" clues dropping down next to each other is a hoot. Nice.
Let's talk about the most important thing in the puzzle with those parentheses and [(The) OK]. First of all, what weirdo editing scheme puts ( ) around a single word for no reason? Especially "The?" Also, I like using [ ] around clues and { } around snarky comments in the gunk report. I've also learned < > can tell robots what to do on this blog. That's all of the possible shapes of things surrounding other things except * for making italics, and " for quoting people and I suppose -- is handy for being extra parantheses-ish. Makes the Oxford comma discussion seem downright pedestrian, eh? I use (~) to remind myself things are topsy-turvy in the uniclues, and I hope to find more uses for the ~ since I worry it's a lonely button and is too far away from ; to know there are others languishing in solitude with coding wonks while @ and # have reached international stardom in the age of social media with the kids these days.
❤️ NOODGE.
😫 STETTED. APE MAN. NOM. MER.
People: 3
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 5
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 74 (28%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: PORNO. COME RED ASS. U R ANO.
Uniclues:
1 What eventually ensues after a tock.
2 How the magician's assistant ended up in half at the morgue.
3 The current Supreme one.
4 Pessimist.
5 Result of comedy night (or a Raid) in the hive.
6 That abbreviated period when a trigonometric function for an acute angle is the ratio between the hypotenuse of a right triangle of which the angle is considered part and the leg opposite the angle, or in simpler language, the salad days when a trigonometric function cosecant θ that is the reciprocal of the sine for all real numbers θ for which the sine is not zero and that is exactly equal to the cosecant of an angle of measure θ in radians.
1 TICK COMES TO PASS
2 PIT SAWS MIX-UP
3 APE MAN COURT
4 NOD NAH NOODGE
5 INSECTS ATE IT UP
6 COSEC DYNASTY
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Noodles for your busted noodle. UDON BANDAGE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Good luck with the internet, Rex. Few things as frustrating as when it goes out!
Not the puzzle's fault, but....
STET is the Latin form of the verb stāre - to stand. Specifically, it is the third-person present subjunctive form (let it stand). Making this a done-deal action that started in the past (kept in) would take the third-person perfect indicative form STETIT.
But, or course, we don't speak Latin and we are not bound by its rules. Yet Americans do have this awful habit of adopting Latin terms wholesale, and then completely mangling them beyond all recognition - as with this excruciatingly painful word STETTED.
STETTED!?!?!?!?!?!!!?
I liked the puzzle. The NW was hard, but I finally put in STETTED as the verb form ({?) for "stet," and it worked. PITSAWS was the last cut (pardon the expression).
Totally bizarre and indecipherable at first but when the theme became clear (and it did fairly quickly) it morphed into a super easy (too easy?) Thursday.
Liked it…made me think.
Hey All !
Noticed the 768 UPs permeating the grid. When two UPs are practically next to each other (SW), how can you not see them? I thought maybe it was a wink to go with the Theme somehow. Would've been neat to try work them into the Theme.
Will probably get a @Gary Tee-hee out of COME RED ASS.
Looked up REEN, got meanings of "to provide an additional or new perspective on something", "a ditch, especially a channel", "the same as the Rhine River". The ditch/channel one seems the most popular. Make someone can reclue the Themers as they sit with this knowledge.
Seeing a lot of @Gary Uniclues OPPORTUNITies. Like ...
Years of kick-ass Trig? - COSEC DYNASTY.
Have yourself a great Thursday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Getupsteam is a tear it up, start over, answer.
How about a more normal clue for MGMT
Lol!!
Nicely explained!
Every tool I have takes two people to use. Me to stand and watch, and my wife to do whatever needs to be done with it.
I've been fascinated recently by that puzzle a few days ago that had us work out the longest number possible using Roman Numerals. Did you know there's a system of Jewish Numerals? The longest number using it is: OYMYBACKISKILLINGME.
I guess it’s appropriate that Rex gave out zero stars today. Besides STETTED, we also have to witness NOEND get subjected to probably the most unpleasant clue of the year so far, and another theme gimmick which leaves the grid full of nonsensical phrases.
I understand that the NYT is “all in” on gimmick Thursdays, and it is obvious that the puzzles take a lot of time and effort to construct. I think they would be so much better if the editors insisted on appropriate fill and wouldn’t stretch credulity with esoteric nonsense like STETTED and other deliberately misleading clueing.
Puzzle rates the hall of shame. Gibberish throughout.
We use "orange" to mean going through on a yellow/amber but having the light turn red before clearing the intersection.
You're not alone.
I just saw the laREDera I'll ever attend on a staGREENuting. It began with an earneREDening featuring a danGREENstrich who is secretly a fasciREDerative running drugs for biGREENpium. It turned into a daylonGREENrdeal. I left at intermission.
Quite an image lurking in the NE. ANTIC PORNO COME RED ASS.
Scene from Bill Clinton's upcoming Epstein testimony:
Comer: Mr. Clinton, can you please tell me who is the Goddess depicted with cow's horns?
Clinton: That depends on what your definition of ISIS.
Comer: ISITNOT ISIS?
Clinton:What ISIS IS IS a terrorist organization.
I helped Mrs. Egs put a hole in her ear. I was nervous and wanted to back out, but she just handed me the needle and said PIERCEDEAR.
I was once a member of the theater costume group responsible for making sure that actors were dressed correctly, but we were always too slow. It seems the GETUPSTEAM couldn't GETUPSTEAM.
Seeing the gimmick early and filling in all of the shaded squares made this too easy. If there had been no shading I think that solve times would have tripled and many solvers would be lauding the puzzle. So, the concept is great, but the execution not so much. Thanks, Joe DiPietro.
Not a bad morning—educational puzzle and fun blog. Now I have another name for the two-man saw in the garage and a history of its origin. My Dad and a friend used it to harvest firewood from tree trunks and large branches that fell during cold winters in upstate NY. Hand up for “nudie” before PORNO. Big hangup was dropping in SUM before OHM and not remembering VSOP. Like others here, was reluctant to enter STETTED but can understand that some editors would have found it irresistible to make a verb of it.
Reminds me of getting “scrod” in Boston…
Crossing two French words with an obscure band with no vowels in the name just killed me.
At least with this puzzle I figured out the gimmick, which was enjoyable to do. I did an archive puzzle last night and needed to see what Rex said about it to know what was going on - turns out the only vowel in the puzzle was I but I didn't even notice that - certainly not while solving, where I don't think about the entire grid, but then not even while looking at it (it was late.) Prime example of construction shenanigans that don't translate into puzzle solving fun. This one felt more fun than that one, to me.
Remind me if I ever get a puzzle published not to read about it here until someone tells me it's safe to look.
I had the exact same reaction. Literally out loud.
Ew. The least enjoyable puzzle I've done in a long time. Come Red Ass had me thinking I was losing it -- had to come to the blog to figure out the "stop/go" thing.
NOODGE is one of those words I've only seen in crosswords. So it doesn't come to mind as an answer when it shows up in a grid. This made the SE the hardest sector for me. ESPY and ROGEN were the only things in there for a long time.
I didn't get the hidden STOP/GO right away - I thought 18A was COME[TO P]ASS because I didn't re-read it's clue to see I was using the wrong tense. I wrote TOP at the top of my puzzle to keep track of what was going on. LOST OPPORTUNITY turned the traffic signal GREEN for me.
Joe DiPietro, I thought this was fun and clever, thanks!
Joining Lynn to say “ditto.” I thought it was just me so I’m a bit relieved to hear someone else say it.
RP: Sorry to hear about your technical difficulties this morning, but I admire your dedication. You soldiered on and got ‘er done.
The Clinton testimony is an instant Egs Classic.
You know, you can use your phone as a WiFi Hotspot and type on your computer. Just saying...
I feel the same way but I’ve never cared for JPs puzzles. I can’t put my finger on it.
I dont thank @lewis enough for always seeing the bright side. I thought this was a fun, challenging Thursday. Cool (Kuhl) theme. Swap out red for stop and green for go. Took me a while to latch on because TRAFFIC looked pretty clear but lIGhts was too short and I thought I was all wrong, not being able to see SIGNALS.
Sure it would've been nice to swap out slow for yellow somewhere, but can imagine that's tough.
I was also sure 84% of American women had at least one POcketbook, which took quite a while to fix.
Enjoyed this one. And our featured band today (MGMT - Andrew VanWyngarden and Bejamin Goldwasser) share my alma mater, so that was fun.
My thought exactly. Ok without the shaded squares but this really drew attention to the ass
I was both surprised and relieved to see RP and others not loving this one. It wasn’t that I disliked the puzzle, but I just didn’t see the theme trick no matter how long I stared, so it was ultimately pretty frustrating. Of course, that’s not the puzzle’s fault and I have to admit I can’t help but admire it otherwise. A very clever idea that would have undoubtedly made me smile if I had figured it out on my own. Maybe next time.
The theme answers are inelegant-- to the point I would say it just flat out doesn't work -- because "go" and "green" start with the same letter, while "red" and "stop" do not. So RED provides a complete substitution, but GREEN ends up being the G of "go" with REEN substituting for "o." Ugly, ugly.
That’s “pink” around here
Yeah, so many clues after I got them I thought "No way that's right...".
Nobody says "Get up steam", they say "Pick up steam". Nobody says "Woken up,", they say "Woke up", or maybe "Awakened".
The trio of "Is it not", "Nice try" and "Tsk tsk" sucks too
Took a while to see the RED and GREEN stop and go thing, but I'm also trying to amuse my granddaughter who is here with me on a sick day, so I'm blaming that. The replacement part was the most fun, the rest not so much.
I have seen a PITSAW in action at the Plimoth Plantation in MA, Takes a man in the pit and a man up top to operate, The joke in this part of the world where they used to harvest ice from frozen lakes with a similar SAW is "don't be the guy on the bottom".
Agree that STETTED and GETUPSTEAM should be in permanent exile. Didn't know ISIS had horns and learned URANO as a prefix. Otherwise easy enough, especially when the gimmick became clear.
OK Thursday, JDP, Just Didn't Particularly sparkle. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
I always know it’s gonna be a tricky but fun puzzle when I see Joe Di Pietro’s name! I met the Tony Award winning playwright while producing one of his plays on the West Coast almost thirty years ago.
Hard agree - yuck!
I used to be a sports writer and editor. STETTED is the word we used when the editor put deleted material back into the story. There aren’t good alternatives to communicate that idea. To say “undid the change” or “changed it back” is using three words when one is needed.
This was a perfectly fine Thursday puzzle. I’m not suggesting everyone turn into Lewis, but I think some of the people who comment here would be much happier if they focused more on the (presumably many) things they like about puzzles and less on the few things they don’t. I assume you do the puzzles because you generally find them to be enjoyable things to do. Rex already has the curmudgeon shtick covered and does it well, with a sense of humor. It works despite (or perhaps because) almost all of the puzzles the NYT publishes are really quite good. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to out-Rex Rex.
Wow! I’ve always enjoyed Joe’s puzzles, but did not know that about him. Very impressive.
Easy. MGMT was it for WOEs an WaKENed before WOKENUP was my only costly erasure.
Liked it more than @Rex did, but I too am not a fan of grid gibberish.
The only thing I liked about this was seeing the phrase “come, red-ass!” The rest was pretty weak. And “stetted”? Yuck.
Awful puzzle. The fact that the G of GREEN was also the G of GO in both cases was so bad- it essentially meant REEN represented O. That top-left corner is hideous un both clueing and answering. I loved Tuesday's theme, and now we've had two absolute garbage puzzles in a row.
Re the discussion of 20A, I wanted to pass on this little tidbit from @Nancy this morning:
“Would anyone say ‘I STETTED that’? Seems like a MUWOC (‘Made-up word of convenience.’) Can I trademark that?”
Why yes, Nancy I think you may. After all, we’re among friends here - well, mostly anyway. ;-)
Anoher editor here. I've also heard it. It bothered me much less than the GLUT of UPs.
I thought it was a clever idea but that graying out RED and GREEN made solving disappointingly easy. Shading the squares seems more "Wednesday" to me. I did like seeing the EVERLY BROTHERS, writing in GETS UP STEAM, and learning that I'm part of a statistic (having at lease one PIERCED EAR).
@Cheryl 9:58am; Maybe. Not all cellular providers and not all data plans allow wifi hotspots.
Funny, we always called that purple.
Sorry, @Sheryl.
Four UPs in the bottom half, actually: MIXUP, WOKEN UP, GETUPSTEAM, ATEITUP. Too many, for sure, but even so, I felt more the way you did about the puzzle. Kind of liked being scolded by those three Down answers in the NW, even if they did make the constructor seem like a bit of a NOODGE!
Agree. NAH is more like a "soft" pass.
mixUP, WokenUP, getUPsteam
Those of us who've worked in publishing have definitely heard editors say, "I stetted that," or "I stetted that because...." Everyone is making way too big a deal about that.
Took longer than an average Thursday. My inner critic was WOKEN UP by some of the entries that seemed head-shakingly SAD, most glaringly STETTED, which, gah, hard pass on that one. (Are we Americans really to blame for that one? It's true that we can be blamed for a lot these days, so sure, pile one more on I guess.) Didn't think NAH was well-clued by "Hard pass". "Folksy denial" seems more like it to me.
In terms of visual appearance, the themers were unappetizing. You managed to outdo yourselves, NYTXW, with the latest gratuitous ASS on display. COME RED ASS! Tee-hee-hah-har-de-har! Great job, you guys; that's AWEsome! (Yeah, I get it. COME(S TO P)ASS.) But all of them were ugly. I give you: XINGREENUT. Even XIN(G O)UT is ugly.
Since they started this whole ASS thing, they might as well commit to it, instead of pussy-footing around with what one of the planets "suggests". Hmm... what else does the name of that planet suggest? "Ladies and Gentlemen, if you point your telescopes in the indicated direction, I believe you will get a clear unobstructed view of URAN..." -- O, never mind. I can't quite commit to my inner ten-year-old either. But I'll bet it's what some of them were thinking. My inner Beavis also noticed that you placed RED ASS at bottom of PORNO. [Uh-huh, uh-huh.]
I was a little smug about the fact that I got MGMT. I know this only through my son who has a number of their albums. Maybe they're a bigger act than I thought they were, but I thought that that entry verged on the obscure.
I had "OH Ho" before OH HI. "OH HO, look who's here!" is perfectly suited when some "you-know-who" is still out of earshot and you nudge (NOODGE?) your neighbor to alert them of the red ass coming your way. That's before you say your fake "OH HI!", once Mr. Redass has come within earshot.
I'll say NICE TRY, but it's probably not your best try, Joe DiPietro. Hoping to see your name again, but under happier circumstances.
JP is a blast from the past and today's solve followed suit. Mostly it was easy to fill in as the theme required little thought. However I got a Saturday's worth of solving waiting for the odd little patches to clear. The middle north was what held me up the most. VOCE dropped right in but the rest of VSOP just wouldn't come to me. I needed the crosses and OHHI, OHM and parsing PIERRCEDEAR were like pulling teeth. I got it done but it was painful.
All the years I've been doing puzzles and I never thought of STET as an actual verb that you could conjugate. I thought the constructor was taking artistic license but I checked my Webster's after solving and believe it or not it is.
Same here. Not a bad puzzle, but when I saw STETTED, I thought "uh-oh"!
It’s yellow cmon now…
Nancy Drew?!!!
Nice double-puztheme rodeo:
1. TRAFFIC SIGNALS.
2. UPs.
staff weeject pick: RED. honrable mention to: UP.
some faves: DYNASTY. ATEITUP. The 2-,3-, & 4-Down ongoin conversation.
And, STETTED gets a "4-har rating".
Thanx, Mr. DiPietro dude. Mighty good to see yah, again.
Masked & Anonymo8Us
p.s.
runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
I am just relieved it wasn’t a pierced nipple
Last Thursday January 15th crossword in Wall Street Journal had a similar theme https://www.wsj.com/articles/hard-drive-thursday-crossword-january-15-edeb623d
Figured out the theme relatively early but found the fill really bad. Ended up in a total slog in the NW corner.
@Conrad... hands up for NUDIE and WAKENED!
I knew I depended on Rex's comments & his take on a puzzle but I never knew how much! Sorry you had problems this am, Rex. It IS terribly frustrating. Personally, I don't know how anyone does the puzzle on their phone but that's just me because I prefer my Mac to a cell phone any day.
So I'm still plodding through this & not enjoying it much. As a matter of fact, I haven't enjoyed many of the recent NYT's puzzles at all. I hope, as I said yesterday, it isn't some weird type of trend. Being a masochist I'll plod on but don't know for how much longer :(
I had to break off mid-solve for a physical therapy appointment. At that point I had not quite figured out RED and GREEN but was suspecting something like that. So when I got back home I filled in all the shaded squares, but could not parse the resulting answers. Finall got it with LOST OPPORTUNITY. iT WASA STILL HARD TO FIGURE OUT THE REST.
To make it worst, I figured it must be a Hindu goddess with cows' horns, and don't remember the point values of Scrabble tiles.
I did enjoy the challenge, though.
@Mike 11:06 am, nicely said.
. Stetted? Shame. No fun. Drudgery.
I didn't get the trick until I hit the revealer, which was annoyingly split into two answers. After that it got a lot easier, but it would have been really great if the actual answers were also phrases.
All those UPs at the bottom is kinda hilarious. The rules have truly been thrown out the window.
Every other day there is another obscure clue for UCLA; today it's "[random person]'s alma mater". At least it's not a sports team name.
I'm a total astronomy fan but URANO is totally new to me... nice bit of trivia to know.
I almost always use "yellow", occasionally "amber", but I do like @Lynn's explanation of "orange".
haven't said this in a while, but this one stunk. all the UP answers, STETTED, but the worst answer for me is DATS
When Trump testifies in the Epstein matter, we might hear something like this:
SENATOR: Which planet sounds like a prefix for heavenly?
TRUMP: Oh, you're a nuisance.
SENATOR: That's close. It's Uranus:
TRUMP (furious): It's my what?
those Gs bugged me too.
As is the absurdiREDera. Keep ‘em comin’, Egs!
I too love this blog. I know most of you because I’ve read it almost everyday for almost 20 years. I started reading it at about the time of its inception and came here because I couldn’t ever finish. Now that they are easier and I am better I routinely finish them. I would especially like to thank Rex (for the blog) Lewis (your comments are dead on) and Gary (you are hilarious). Back to your usual programming.
@Mike. I agree with your take on STETTED. It's just fine. For a bit more then 20 years I was an editorial artist and then a Design Editor (pretty fancy, eh?) at a fairly large Canadian newspaper. It was not my job to write stories but, when working with the non-hard-news desks (fashion, food, etc.) I would often be called upon to supply heds, decks, and even the occasional lede. Everything I wrote was submitted to the news desk editors who often did not understand some of the artsy in-jokes and remove them. I would then have to plead my case in order to get them reinstated, or STETTED.
Anyone else have VELO-drome and therefore ended up with GETUPSTEVE?
Just me then…
This old timer remembers when most railroads had to GET UP STEAM to take passengers or freight anywhere. I was very small when that was the case, but it was especially true of the old UP. Now once steam was
UP it stayed UP even when the train was stopped for an hour or more.
Indeed the constant smoke was one reason why in some urban areas the lines were electrified
APEMAN crossing PORNO and COMEREDASS is…something. It’s definitely something.
STETTED put me off for the whole thing. A wasted Thursday.
I couldn't get pitsaw, but when it fell through crosses a light went on & I remembered the scene in James (Percival Everett's wonderful depressing novel) where James has to be the pit-man using a pitsaw. Recommend the book not this puzzle (stetted???).
done Joe's puzzles like most of us for years - I do believe he's trying to get us to look 'up' at the traffic lights and you 'stop' on the first letter literally with your eyes and then Go as in your eyes move to the right on green to link answer - its eyeball traffic cop/signals - Get up Steam is a historical phrase albeit archaic these days - thanks Joe!
@RooMonster 8:17 AM
Uh uh, looks like you have me figured out. 😂
@Anonymous 12:14 PM
Well, yeah. Somebody here told me about Libby, so I listen to audio books driving to and from work. It's Albuquerque libraries, so the selection is rather meager. I've listened to most of the classics they own that I missed in college. I am currently trying to make it through Don Quixote but I have to keep returning it as they only have one copy and it's really long. Nancy Drew seems to be in unlimited supply and can be finished with a couple weeks of driving. So far she's solved every mystery, but there's a lot more bonkings on heads than you'd imagine.
I'm not enjoying the recent puzzles either. Relieved it's not just me.
DATS annoyed me also but, because nobody else was complaining, I thought it might just be a me thing.
🌾agree
Agree on the blog
I find that there was so much to gripe about in this puzzle that no one else got around to that one. I didn't like it either, but it was somewhat lower in priority.
Love that low rating! 1.5 stars! Perfect!
Dat's becuz ya' don't talk like thems
@Les, yeah I originally had KNOW "what I'm talkin' 'bout" (which would've had a question mark, I guess) and pretty much had to get all the crosses to get DATS.
Got off to a good start with 1D "Tools requiring two people". When I was young'un one of my chores was helping my uncle go into the woods to cut up some fallen trees to make firewood for the coming winter. We used a crosscut saw with handles on both ends. So that brought back some long ago pleasant memories.
It is, of course, too many letters but the P in 1A PINT pointed me to PIT SAWS. They are actually crosscut saws used vertically to cut long flat planks rather than horizontally to cut short tree trunk cross sections.
TSK TSK. Cluing 9D APE MAN as "Early ancestor" is so 19th century. I would go with a "1970 hit for The Kinks: clue.
Feeling soo stupid. I finished the puzzle but never did figure out the theme. I twas obvious early on that I should l put red and green in the grey squares and not too hard to know what the rest wld be, at least with crosses, but could not see how it worked. Now that I know it's so obvious and I quite like it.
Liked "pit saw" and "nice try".
Was amused by "shod" for "sporting flats"
Never heard of a "noodge" and don't much like the word.
Agree with the many rejections of "Nah" for a hard pass.
Had many variations for 39D before "woken up" Is that grammatical?
For me this was a very nice Thursday puzzle, perhaps too easy because 11D gave the game away by giving us the words STOP and GO. I like to think I would have figured those out for myself since the colors were gray and stood out.
TIL the meaning of URANO. Whole new meaning for the element! Did not mind th UPs! Thank you, Joe
Francis Ford Coppola is an obscure name??? One of our most esteemed filmmakers: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti, etc., etc., etc. Come on!
Starman: Red light go, green light stop, yellow light go very fast.
When I was little my family used to go to a restaurant in Portchester called the SAWPIT (gone now, I’m sure) And one wall had this big mural of a landscape and in it were two guys push-pulling…a PIT SAW.
Thought N was two points, but that’s WWF.
Yes, that's a pretty good reason to like it, yes? I agree.
Alas, the crossword constructor Joe DiPietro is not the same person as the Tony Award winning playwright...
I think the puzzle displayed more skill than is reflected in Rex's one-and-a-half-star rating. The theme was clever, and worked, and though some of the cluing was less than stellar, one and a half stars is too low, in my view. The three Down answers in the NW corner were amusing, and except for too many UPs, there wasn't a lot of gunk. And we had Coppola and the Everlys—yay.
Of the bazillion things I love about this blog, near the top of the list is the unpredictable things that generate many comments and replies. Today, I’m loving the variety re the yellow/amber/orange. I’m old enough to recall that when I took my first driver’s test in Ohio, the “caution” light was “amber,” but now seems to be yellow, at least in Oklahoma.
Found that out when I was hit broadside by a huge pickup truck. The cop who came to visit me in the hospital told me “the guy may have started on yellow but every witness says it was red before he hit you.
Also, when I started driving, teens called racing through before yellow turns red “going through on pink.”
@Anonymous: Good to know. However, I’m fairly certain Nancy also has an extensive background in publishing, so maybe it’s not all that commonly used.
DJ
I went through the names of the planets. Had to be Uranus.There is urananium
@Anonymous 5:35 pm, I did NOT mean Coppola was obscure; I meant the clue was. I was saying that plopping the name of an alum into the clue... even my favorite director... is no fun and absolutely no help to me. I have no idea where any famous people went to college.
Well I thought this was fun. In fact, I finished the puzzle and said to myself, “That was twisty but fun.” Ok, it was hours ago so I can’t remember exactly but it was something like that. Thank you @Joe DiPietro for something a little different. PEPPY, even.
Finally, finally we got the full scolding, “TSKTSK,” instead of the USUAL lone, SAD tsk. But a single ANTIC? DATS a LOST OPPORTUNITY, if you ask me.
MEOW NOEND - how cats hound you to feed them. Or let them out. Or let them in. Out. In.
I am one of the 16%.
How about the Very Safe Clue for NEE? “French word between two surnames” is about as noncontroversial as it comes, IS IT NOT?
“Mal de” MER reminded me of a rexworder of yore whose posts I miss, @Malsdemare. Hi if you’re still reading, @Mals!
I didn’t count UP the UPs, but didn’t @Rex say something the other day along the lines of “If you’re gonna break the rules, do it big or go home.” I think Joe must have been paying attention.
XINGREENUT is kuhl.
Me too. I solved the entire puzzle, except for the NW corner which was 60% blank.
I've worked at The Nation since 1986. I've heard STETTED many, many times in my illustrious career.
I was looking for "yellow" since, for me, a traffic signal should have all three colors. Right??
Couldn’t agree more. Terrible puzzle.
So much weirdly specific cluing in this puzzle.
Hotel cooling units, as if ACs only exist in hotels?
The Estonia clue saying the name “can be” spelled with one point letters suggests there are other ways to spell it that would garner more points.
Being shod would be true with any shoe, not just flats.
Dats not what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.
I was most annoyed by the ‘g’ of ‘green’ working in the across clue (so it’s really just ‘reen’ getting replaced by ‘o’) while the ‘r’ of red doesn’t similarly work. Would have been a better theme for me otherwise.
Came just to see what Rex would say about "get up steam". I thought, surely they won't pretend this is phrase. Also, not capitalizing Zombie, the cocktail is devious and wrong.
Glad I wasn't the inky one ….a bit inane
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