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Chick checker of a sort / THU 2-5-26 / Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky. / Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal / Meat stick brand / Racer's final go-round / Paragraph starter, perhaps / Prince Harry, per his memoir's title / Become acquainted via Gmail, say
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Constructor: Dario Salvucci
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
17A: |$|$|$|$| (TOOLBOOTHS)
24A: | : : : | / / (FREEWAY EXIT)
49A: | : : :-| (LANE CLOSURE)
58A: |X:X:X:X| (TRAFFIC JAM)
|X:X:X:X|
|X:X:X:X|
|X:X:X:X|
Spare is a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, which was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates.The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews. The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an "heir and a spare" were needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family. In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army. He writes about his relationship with his older brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father's marriage to Queen Camilla, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple's subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.
Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry's openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became "the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time" on the date of its release. (wikipedia)
• • •
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| [OCALA heat map (peaking in late '80s/early '90s before clearly tapering off starting in the 2010s)] [xwordinfo] |
As for the theme, only TOLLBOOTHS made any visual sense to me as I was solving. The others ... there just wasn't enough visual context for me to see that I was supposed to be looking at four parallel lanes. I kept reading the clue as if they represented one lane, headed west to east (i.e. left to right). The colons just weren't registering as dotted-line lane dividers. As for TRAFFIC JAM, in my software, the clue represents those three rows of traffic as one line, so instead of a proper jam (three rows deep), you just get what looks like 12 lanes of traffic. The idea that an "X" was a car was hard enough to grasp. The "jam" part was lost on me completely. I just inferred that answer from crosses. I'm not opposed to the concept here, but it just isn't executed in a fully legible way. I have a suspicion that it's going to drive some solvers (esp. those w/ tired eyes, old eyes, or any kind of vision issues) crazy. My eyes are fine and I found it fussy and confusing. It was pretty easy, though, so maybe people will forgive this puzzle its infelicities. Success on a Thursday tends to give people strong feelings of goodwill.
There was one thing I really liked today, which was the clue on ALL CAPS (38D: Case of emergency?). Nice bending of "case" there. I'm struggling to find other things that elevated the puzzle above average, though, even briefly. The corners are all banks of 7s, and banking 7s rarely yields greatness. Hard to do a bank of 7s even without thematic pressure, but run themers in there and the best you can hope for is that the corner doesn't have to resort to any really ugly or awkward fill. All in all, I think those corners all hold up, at least in the longer answers, so that's something. But the glue of this puzzle is an avalanche of tired short fill. "A" is for Avalanche. "A" as in [deep breath] APSE AERO ALPO AMFM ADUE ADIN ALEE ASTO ABCS ACHE AIDS ALLY. And that's just the four-letter stuff. Twelve four-letter "A" answers. That's not gonna lead anywhere good. In addition to the unpleasantness of the SEXER helping send male chicks to a mass grave, there's the eternal grimness of TASE (15A: Give quite a shock), the absurd Creationist fantasy of an ARK in Kentucky (21A: Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.), and the loneliness of the single SLIM JIM (43D: Meat stick brand). Is CAR FARE really a common thing for a "commuter" to pay (44D: Commuter's charge)? I think of commuters taking their own cars, or riding in car pools, or taking public transportation like subway, rail, bus, etc. Do people use CAR FARE to refer to payment for things like Uber? CAB FARE is a natural phrase to me. CAR FARE I've heard, but for "commuters," I really don't know. Seemed off.
Bullets:
- 3D: Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal (SALT TAX) — Me: "... Eugene?" I had a weird double-levy moment in the NW corner, as LEVY was the first thing I wrote in for 20A: Charge on imports (DUTY).
[I miss you, Catherine O'Hara]
- 48A: Racer's final go-round (GUN LAP) — no idea. Never heard of this. Had LAP and just ... waited for crosses. Last lap. final lap, closing lap—heard all those. GUN LAP, nope. Turns out it's a debut [gently taps "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign] [update: looks like this is a phenomenon in foot racing (i.e. track), not car racing, as I had assumed]
- 5D: Paragraph starter, perhaps (TAB) — me: "... SIR? No, that's a salutation ..." Really wanted a word you'd use at the start of a paragraph, not a key you'd press. The clue's not wrong, just (for me) tough. Ish.
- 58D: Confucian "way" (TAO) — I got a letter last month during my blog fundraiser from a reader who had just one thing to tell me (besides the usual pleasantries) and that was that TAO is not how you spell it. It shouldn't be TAO, it should be DAO. She was very adamant on this point. When I search DAO, all I get are something called (ominously) "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" (!?!?!). The Tao v. Dao issue apparently arises from two different modes of transliteration, the Wade-Giles (unvoiced "T") and Pinyin (voiced "D"), the latter being, I think, somewhat closer to "correct" pronunciation. But I'm out of my depth here. I've just seen TAO so often (esp. in crosswords) that I haven't given the spelling a second a thought. But apparently this is an issue that can inspire strong feelings. As someone who has strong feelings about SEXER and E-MEET, I'm in no position to judge.
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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136 comments:
Easy-Medium. Solved without reading the theme clues, although once I got ON THE ROAD (35AA) it was Wednesday easy. The clue for TRAFFIC JAM (58A) made me LOL.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
oglER before SEXER(?) at 31A.
WOEs:
I knew the city of OCALA (14A) but I didn't know there's a National Forest there.
GUN LAP (48A)
What @Rex said about the flippant clue "Give quite a shock" at 15A for what is essentially a torture method (TASE).
If it was ever called a gun lap, it is now called the final lap. And for a very long time.
I enjoyed this one, 13 minutes last night during basketball. So medium. Almost all the resistance was theme-related, as most of the non-theme material was clued in a pretty straightforward manner. I really enjoyed sussing out the various theme clues--couldn't figure out the 1st themer at all, so just moved on. the second one looked like an exit to me, so I put in EXIT at the end of that one and waited to see whether it was FREEWAY or HIGHWAY or something else. Actually took out WAY for a few minutes because I thought the class you had to change for was art! But then, saw that it was going to be GYM (ELM was clued in a way I couldn't miss), so that fixed that. I know the book, so the revealer was easy enough to help me out. In the app, I thought the clues looked pretty good. Very imaginative use of the keyboard! I don't like HELIXES (I think of them as HELIcES). Overall, a very clever thursday theme!!!! Thanks, Dario!!! And congrats on the debut!!!! : )
I liked it better than Rex did. Comfortable theme which helped the solve. Only brief problem came in the NE, where I had (pillow) "case" instead of SHAM. Guessed successfully at SPARE, because it sounded like a lament from a future king's kid brother (is that what Prince Harry meant?).
'Mistake "air" for "heir," say' was a pretty clever way to clue the extremely tired and way-overused filler word ERR, so at least there's that.
Otherwise this is one of those where the theme revealer helps you get the clues, not the other way around. Easy for a Thursday.
That was me... computer update.
You’re spot on. Kings always wanted an heir and a spare.
Hit the revealer early, then waited for road-related answers to appear from the crosses. Ignored the clue “art” altogether.
Thought that final go-round might be a fUNLAP. Wrong, but more fun than the right answer.
Wasn’t Catherine O’Hara wonderful?
If GUNLAP was ever a thing for a final lap of a race, that’s long been replaced in track with a “bell lap”. It’s always been (to my knowledge) the “white flag lap” in auto racing. I wouldn’t think horse/dog racing would have multiple laps so I’m really struggling with the gun lap context.
Easy-Medium is probably about right, although I was slow for reasons unconnected to the puzzle. I'll keep it short: this puzzle had no pizzazz. One of the most boring Thursdays I can recall, both in terms of theme and fill. Sorry to have to say so.
Maybe some of the cluing was okay; e.g., what Rex said about ALL CAPS, and what @Anthony in TX said about ERR. And I couldn't have told you what exactly made the great Steffi GRAF great, so glad to have that clue as a refresher. But I think that'll do it for me today.
Thank you for the shout-out to The Phantom Tollbooth. I read that over and over when I was young. I think the part with Chroma the Great was my favorite. And Jules Feiffer's art.
Congratulations to Paolo Pasco, who caught fire in the second half of Jeopardy last night, and ran away with the victory, winning the Tournament of Champions, and getting a spot on the Masters tournament. His broad knowledge, quickness, generous spirit, and that mischievous glint in his eye made him a joy to behold. Go Paolo!
I watch on Hulu, a day late, so thanks for the spoiler.
Sexer was ridiculous. The overall puzzle was terrific.🎈🎈🎊🎊
Yeah, "sexer" hit me in a bad way. I do consume chicken products, and so am responsible in some ways for the existence of that job, but it's certainly an unpleasant thing to think about when doing the puzzle.
Or the bell lap. I don't know when they stopped using guns and started using bells to signal the last lap, but I'm pretty sure it predates me - and is therefore darn old.
Thought it was fun - the ASCII art can be a little obtuse but it works. Top notch revealer.
Double HELIX in the sky tonight
Another Seinfeld showing with MAESTRO. The fill was a little clunky as Rex highlights but overall it went in smoothly. BEAR PAW, SLIM JIM, SALT TAX are all solid longs.
TMBG
Enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
Neutral Milk Hotel
Liked it a little less than Rex, as he at least was "not opposed to the concept", but if I want to do emoticon puzzles, I'll go to Highlights magazine. I want word play, not image play, in my crossword. I similarly tend to dislike crosswords centered on grid art, which compromises the fill for no good reason.
And I really hated ON THE ROAD, which we read for book club a few years back. Self-indulgent drivel.
Never in my life heard of GUNLAP either, but it was easy enough to figure out
WAY TO GO PAOLO!
GUNLAP crossing ADIN and ADUE was painful for me. ADIN was totally unfamiliar to me and ADUE I was just doing my best guess on.
Kind of a joy ride for me.
Lots of riddles, which I adore – not only in translating the visual clues, but also in the regular ones. I found that several times I had to run the alphabet to figure out the last square in an answer. That, to me, is a sign of s good clue/answer.
Interesting answers too, from a wide range of fields: SHAM, SHIRE, ALL CAPS, BEAR PAW, CANASTA, CHINO, HELIXES, MAESTRO.
CAR FARE (44D) could have been the puzzle title.
Lovely clues, such as [Case of emergency] for ALL CAPS, and [Paragraph starter, perhaps] for TAB, but my favorite was [Mistake “air” for “heir”, say] for ERR, with those two “err” soundalikes – so dang clever, and furthermore, ERR has been in the major crossword outlets more than a thousand times – you’d think all the clues would have been thought of – but this is a clue debut!
All this plus some brain-loving speed bumps made for a splendid outing. Thank you for that, Dario, and congratulations on your NYT debut puzzle!
As soon as I saw chick checker, I thought of the chicken sexer in the movie Minari. I am really surprised Rex didn't think of this as well.
It’s hard (for me) to get excited about the Rex rant this morning. It seems like much ado about very little. That’s a concession we’ve made as a society. People were concerned when the price of eggs shot up. Try going back to when everyone had to raise their own chickens. I notice Rex didn’t mention anything about giving up eating eggs 18 years ago when he was so “traumatized” by a crossword puzzle answer.
I think I caught a break today, as I did my usual eye-roll when I saw that once again we had hieroglyphics instead of written clues. Fortunately I caught on after the first one and was able to discern the others with just a few crosses.
I agree that CAR FARE was a stretch, I liked the clue for BEAR PAW, and until today pâté was a dish made out of finely minced proteins.
Regarding TAO, your reader is correct that it is dào in Pinyin. The D is not voiced, however, but rather an unaspirated T. It therefore sounds much like a D to an English speaker's ear. The aspirated English T sound is spelled T in Pinyin. So your reader prefers the Pinyin transliteration system, which is almost universally used these days to romanize Chinese.
The Wade-Giles system is older and still often used in Taiwan, especially for place names. There is no D in this system, only T for unaspirated and T' (with apostrophe) for aspirated. WG TAO = Pinyin DAO.
Confusing? Yup. Sometimes they even get mixed together when taken over by other languages. Taipei, for instance, is written Táiběi in Pinyin and pronounced like English TIE BAY. It is written Tʻai²-pei³ in Wade-Giles. The P is unaspirated and still comes off as a B to English ears. English speakers therefore incorrectly pronounce it with an aspirated P as TIE PAY.
And that "bible-inspired tourist attraction" is run by a bunch of creationist anti-science evangelist wackos who believe the earth is 6,000 years old. Really coulda done without that clue for ARK this morning. Just saying.
@Rex. There’s hope yet. Adaptation is strong in Europe and is expected to rapidly expand in the US in 2025, 2026.
In-ovo sexing technology is being developed and implemented in some regions to determine the sex of the embryo before hatching, allowing for the prevention of, male chick culling
I'm 84. I can remember a gun being fired when the leader in a race reached the start of the final lap. Not surprising that younger solvers didn't know this.
Ditto! Also, this movie is how I learned this was an occupation for a lot of Korean immigrants at the time. It wasn't until after this movie that I learned my own grandfather had worked as a chicken sexer briefly.
Interesting history; awkward word.
Hey All !
The TRAFFIC JAM is quite hellacious
A LANE CLOSURE makes me vexatious
The TOLL BOOTHS ahead aren't very spacious
To have a FREEWAY EXIT I'd be gracious
If only I were more audacious
I would really be ostentatious
I'd use the break down lane efficacious
ON THE ROAD again would be bodacious
Interesting ThursPuz. Seems like it's better suited for a Wednesday. Wondering if he thought of this theme whilst stuck in traffic. Apropos, if so.
No problems with the fill. Fill is fill is fill. I imagine you can scrutinize the puz to see if better fill will fit, but sometimes once you get coherent stuff to gel, you're just happy it works. 😁
Have a great Thursday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Yeah, I had no idea. I had G_ _. Otherwise I loved the puzzle.
Enjoyed the cluing and fill as much as I can recently recall. Nice little puzzle. Now, it was too easy for this late in the week but that’s where we’ve been for too many years now.
I finally landed on the idea that the idea and themes of the book were much better than the actual prose. It’s rightfully iconic, especially given the timing of it’s release and the broader movement it inspired/was part of. But yeah, the book itself was pretty mid.
In this case, “racer” in the clue indicates a person on foot. But I think that one tripped a lot of people up.
And made Paolo $250,000 richer!
Salt Tax is NOT dull. Salt was a medium of exchange going back to the Romans. It was the only preservative for storing perishable goods. Roman soldiers were paid in salt. The word “salary” is derived from “salt”. Hardly dull, professor.
I always print the puzzle and solve with a pencil (and eraser). Does anyone else out there do that? In any case, about once in every two weeks or so, they give you the newspaper version as the print out, like today. Is there any rhyme or reason behind that?
car fare is purposefully misleading as cab fare is a thing and car fare isn't. Good puzzle otherwise.
i see no problem with the ARK clue and i'm not even religious, i think it's neat that they built a whole lifesize recreation
no need to insult anyone !
If OFL were editing, wouldn't Rex ex sexer extra quick?
I prefer dAO, but that's just my PINyin.
After the Erie Canal was complete they used the SALTTAX to fund the now-defunct Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
I'm generally appreciative of anything that is a novel approach to a theme, but I'm with @kitshef in not finding this primitive picture-art very interesting. But thanks for the journey, Dario Salvucci.
Well, the sun is shining, the snow is melting and Paolo won the Jeopardy tournament of champions. All is right with the world.
If nothing else, this was an intriguing theme which will likely generate healthy blog discussion. While it was not a concept which I particularly enjoyed, the rest of the puzzle went very smoothly. Yes, some of the fill was a little tired, but there was very little trivia and only a few proper names. I’ll take that any day over fancy four-letter fillers.
Doubt I was the only one who had trouble at ADIN/ADUE which left me wondering WOE that last lap was supposed to be called. I’ve watched hundreds of NASCAR races - had just finished watching one when I started this puzzle - but never heard of GUN LAP. Turns out that’s because it’s race run by a human, not a car, so I guess it’s a matter of perspective.
I read SPARE when it was first published and enjoyed it. Thanks to ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer, it’s an absorbing memoir which flows like good fiction.
I recall the same gun use at swim meets as well, for longer races. I would say that the term GUNLAP was not used often.
Liked the puzzle more that Rex. I found the theme novel and slightly amusing. I also found the stacked 7s in the corners to be pretty good. On the easy side but wound up with pretty average time because I got hung up on the SALTTAX/DUTY cross and spent a minute there.
I agree with Anthony in TX: “
'Mistake "air" for "heir," say' was a pretty clever way to clue the extremely tired and way-overused filler word ERR, so at least there's that.”
Also, another day without a Star Wars reference (but then there IS a Lord of the Rings clue.)
Yes, it's uncomfortable to be reminded of such practices. I, too, consume eggs and chicken. It doesn't bother me, though, that it's in the puzzle.
I object to SLAY because it means kill! (Not really, just kidding.)
@Twangster- Lewis has been posting about the ToT and Paolo’s run every day so not sure why you would read the blog if you didn’t want a spoiler. The event was aired over 12 hours ago. If you don’t want it to be spoiled probably shouldn’t be on the internet…..
Regarding Rex's comment on the proper spelling of TAO/DAO : It seems to me if you're worried about that one letter, you've kind of gotten away from the spirit of TAO/DAO...
Well I looked at all those dollar signs and immediately thought hey--TOLLBOOTHS! OK, no I didn't, and I had ONTHEROAD and TRAFFICJAM and I think even the rest of the themers when I went back to the clues to try to make sense out of them, and did, but they sure weren't obvious. If they were to you, congratulations.
Never got the chicken connection with SEXER, figured it was some new term for a lout. Live and learn. Didn't know the origin of SPARE, which is interesting. Liked the clue for BEARPAW and like @Bob Mills, remember the GUNLAP very well. Advantages of age Otherwise mostly on the easy side of medium here.
Congrats on the debut, DS. Sorry I Didn't See the themers in the clues, but that's just me. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
Came here this morning expecting to meet with complaints the this picky was too easy for a Thursday. Glad it got more respect than that because I thought the theme was well done. I love to watch races of any kind, but don’t recall ever hearing of “GUNLAP” but apparently that’s on me. Got SEXER from the crosses, but recognized it from somewhere long ago and far away…The pictograph clues were fun…and thanks to @MaxxPuzz for the lesson on aspirated vs unaspirated consonants—a tough assignment for English speakers trying to learn Asian languages and some others.
Totally agree with SEXER. Awful way to start the day. And thank you for Catherine O'Hara. Still grieving that and I expect to be for some time.
Never use a preposition to end a sentence with ;-)
Easy for me (8:25). I didn't have any trouble parsing the theme clues once I got the joke, which was pretty early on. Really hate E-[anything] fill, so even though I saw EMEET almost immediately I held out from entering it in hopes that the constructor would just Not, but they Did, so I Had to. Biggest yuck moment in the puzzle. Re the constructor-indispensable (apparently) TAO, I've always understood it was pronounced "dao" and transliteration of a non-Western language is always going to be kinda fuzzy around the edges. I'm old enough to remember when the capitol city was rendered "Peking" and no Chinese menu offers "Beijing Duck."
¡¿Cómo te atreves?!
Thanks for the Phantom Tollbooth cover. It was my favorite book in third grade.
I struggled mightily with the northwest for what appears to be no reason, and my brain protests MEMED and EMEET, but otherwise this would have been happily at home on a Tuesday. It's not much of a theme, and those clues are super weird, but it's the least gunk in a puzzle in a very long time. The corner stacks were all nice.
We read On the Road in some alternative lit class in college and I reread it maybe 20 years ago. It's way overrated, but I did see the original manuscript once. It's typed single space on an enormous roll of paper. That's pretty cool and pretty dumb at the same time.
Let me tell you about leaves in a waiting room. Since moving out here into the sticks a little over a year ago, I'm on health insurance number three, and so amusingly that means lining up my slate of healthcare professionals over and over, and in all this time I have yet to actually see a doctor. This is the land of the nurse practitioner. Unsurprisingly, we lead lists of most malpractice and most lawyers per capita outside of Washington D.C. It's all pretty dismal, but the exciting thing is my latest nurse practitioner is in one of those 1960s-ish buildings with the jungle planted in an enclosed two-story brick courtyard with water features and so so so many philodendrons around which is 30 little offices doing who knows what. It's a fern on steroids utopia. And it's the first green thing I've seen in New Mexico.
❤️ SLAY. HOTDOGS. ALL CAPS.
People: 2
Places: 3
Products: 6
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 15 of 78 (19%) {Hooray! A mighty rare sub-20 outing. Barely needed the ALL CAPS button for this puzzle. The Ministers of Gunk in Gunkmenistan are meeting in emergency session.}
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: SEXER.
Uniclues:
1 Lists of chores on a boat's refrigerator with a heading for "two by two poop pickup."
2 Clot of tourists in front of the Pietà.
3 WIENERSCHNITZEL, in English.
4 When you wrap meat around your finger.
5 Why the conductor is taking a class online called, The Easy, Fast, and Fun Way to Play Guitar in Only 30 Days.
1 ARK DUTY GRIDS (~)
2 APSE TRAFFIC JAM
3 HOTDOGS ALL CAPS
4 SLIM JIM HELIXES (~)
5 MAESTRO SPAMMED
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Two seater with sixteen handlebars for Ganesha and friends. HINDU BIKE SHARE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OK, I'll show my age here (77). When I was lad, my mother hired a fiftyish lady to come in and clean the house. She charged, I can't remember, probably $20 for a days work. "Plus car fare". It is a legitimate phrase, but dates to even before my days. As in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", there was a very elegant system of street cars that got people around cities back before WW2. Not many buses. You could even travel between towns in a lot of instances. When you got on one, you had to pay your car fare.
Theme clues were gibberish. Ignored them.
I finally got what the symbol clues were doing when LANE CLOSURE filled in. I can see how the dots and dashes indicate that. But I was expecting 58A to be TRAFFIC cones, not a jam.
There are no tollbooths in Minnesota. There are two toll bridges, Google tells me, one going into Canada and one going into North Dakota. I've been on neither of them. There was a toll tunnel in Iceland that caused me some angst. We didn't have any Icelandic currency and our car's WiFi thingy had died so I couldn't pay online. The instructions said that we had 3 hours in which to pay - as soon as we could, we pulled over and found someone who would let us charge our WiFi and then we signed in to pay. I did not want that on our rental car records!
I found this puzzle rather odd and not as easy as some of you are saying. Thanks, Dario Salvucci!
Remembering Steffi Graf helped me with that final lap. If I didn’t have the “G” I could imagine FUN there or even DUN or SUN lap filling the bill. I have watched some NASCAR races with my grandson but I don’t recall anything about the final lap other than thinking “thank goodness it’s done, now we can get to Sunday dinner!”.
Don't know, but when I get the newspaper version the left side clue numbers and parts of the clues are cut off and I solve on line, not my favorite way.
\o/ Paolo. \o/
What you write is indeed interesting (I didn't know that about the word "salary"). But the SALT TAX to fund the Erie canal has nothing to do with Roman soldiers -- on the face of it, I can see why Rex thinks that doesn't sound so exciting. If there's some way you can add more interest to that, I'd gladly listen.
I heard someone yelling "YOU GO PAOLO!" - it was me :)
@anon 6:48 They also say BELL lap in bicycle racing. Criteriums are laps as well as track cycling in Velodrome races. The riders can easily hear the bell
Up until a few weeks ago, I used paper and pen. I saw the same issue occasionally also. Never figured out why
For the record, New Mexico is in fact 41st in lawyers per capita in the US.
First green thing? In New Mexico? The place famous for its green chilis. They have a festival for goodness sake.
Nice poetry!
I didn’t think much of the emoticon clues… But I did Enjoy some of the shorter stuff like salt, tax crossing duty, crossing tollbooth. All Different ways we get taxed crammed into one corner
I'm one of those backyard chicken people. I rely on the sexers so I don't end up with a bunch of roosters, attacking each other, tearing up the hens, attacking the human (me!) who takes care of them, crowing at top volume at 4am, causing angry neighbors. So don't scorn the sexers! Somebody has to do it.
My hens have a pretty good life - nice big yard with trees and boulders to perch on, tasty kitchen scraps, and a cozy henhouse. My friends get free eggs.
A lot of people do raise their own chickens. It used to be banned in Boston, but public pressure made the city change -- now you can raise them only if they are all hens, so the SEXERs are filling a need. My son and his wife keep six hens; the eggs are about 20 times as good as what you can buy in a store.
For those of us struggling with high blood pressure, the idea of a salt tax might be worth considering.
I use the actual newspaper Monday through Friday and print the puzzle on Saturday and Sunday… But I use a pen as did my father
I’ve noticed that anytime there are symbols or anything out of the ordinary in the clues, we get the puzzle in newspaper version although sometimes it also pops up for no apparent reason. And yes, I always print a copy and use a pencil/eraser.
I liked it. Once I figured out all the punctuation clues were traffic-related, i thought it was really cute.
It is also from whence the phrase “ worth his salt” derives
None of the contestants got Final Jeopardy right. Paolo used his answer board for this note:
What an incredible ride with the best ToC group I could ask for. <3 to you all.
I read somewhere -- I think in the book "Streetcar Suburb" -- that you could go from Trenton NJ to Lynn MA on streetcars. Yes, you did pay CARFARE for your ride.
I was appropriately puzzled by the ascii clues-- at one point I tried to make 24-A be emoticon--but once I got to the revealer it all became pretty clear. It was fun to remember TOLL BOOTHS, which are now going the way of their cousins the phone booths.
I'm 82. I knew what a GUN LAP was, but I don't remember ever actually hearing a gun.
I was going to complain that khaki is a color while CHINO is a type of fabric-- but then I saw that Nordstrom has a page called "Men's CHINO & khaki pants, so OK.
HELIcES was my only writeover. M-W says both are acceptable, though the C is preferred. It's the shape of the whole DNA molecule, not of any particular gene, but close enough.
EMEET is deplorable, especially as clued. If I said, as happened last week, that my class would have to EMEET today because of personal issues, it would still be deplorable, but would make more sense. (What I actually said was, "We'll have to meet on Zoom." But it evoke fond memories of my friends Rick and Pavlo, both of whom I met by email and corresponded with for years before ever meeting them in person.
Very easy and easier than yesterday’s for me. No costly erasures and SALT TAX and GUNLAP were it for WOEs…a pretty whooshy solve.
I didn’t spend much time trying to decipher theme clues as the answers were fairly obvious.
Liked it more than @Rex did but he is right about the fill.
@pablo: I solved that issue by adjusting my printer settings. When I click PRINT and the printer box pops up, I click the arrow for “more settings,” then drop down to SCALE and select “fit to paper.” Just FYI, it worked for me.
Point of order: As a rule, Roman soldiers were not paid with salt. Although salt was at times provided to them.
@Anonymous 9:34 - Good eye! And a very sly correction; I'm gonna remember that one. I always think of Winston Churchill, whose speech writer told him it was improper to end a sentence with a preposition. To which he replied" This is an impertinence up with which I will not put!" I'll be more careful next time. :-)
I didn't even try to decipher the hieroglyphics, just saw, after first getting TRAFFIC JAM, that the theme answers had to do with car travel, and went with that. I would have liked the ON THE ROAD THEME as a normal theme without the symbols.
I was a little relieved to read Rex's explanation of SEXER, actually, as I was awfully afraid the clue was using "chicks" to refer to women and that a sexer was someone...pretty bad. Whew.
Kept thinking "Show-offs" was going to be some kind of HOG but finally got DUTY, which led to HOT DOGS. All in all, I didn't think it was a bad Thursday puzzle. BEARPAW, HELIXES, LATKE, and MAESTRO added some spice.
When I was young, there were more streetcars than buses on the city streets. The tickets were definitely called carfare.
In my youth, 1960's - early 1970's, the term car fare was commonly used in NYC to refer to the cost of a trip on mass transit, bus or subway.
So much fun seeing him come up with the answers so quickly! I just checked, and the Masters Tournament follows the Invitational Tournament, which starts tonight.
Yes, so annoying! I print it out and write in the numbers. A bit of a pain but bears online solving.
Super easy for me (solved less than 50% of my average Thursday time, and only 7% over my best-ever Thursday time). I ignored the ASCII art—I had enough in crosses to figure out the first one had to be TOLL BOOTHS even before I got to the revealer, and especially when I knew they were all road related, it wasn't had to fill the rest in after I got a few crossers. If I'd actually tried figuring out what those figures represented, I'd probably still be working on the puzzle now!
Weird and different puztheme, using typewriter art. M&A likes different.
M&A's suggested addition to the puzthemer list*:
| : | : |
| : |O:O|
| : |X: |
| : |X: |
staff weeject pick: ERR. Funny rhymer clue.
some fave stuff: ATEDIRT. HELIXES. SLIMJIM. ALLCAPS clue. FERN clue.
EMEET? har
SEXER? har x 2
* TURTLERACEDELAY. [with O = slow-movin semi.]
Thanx for the ride, Mr. Salvucci dude. And congratz on yer artistic(al) debut.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
p.s.
@r.alph did some real cool codin to empower the runtpuzs to include true illustrations. Recent example, if U use the Down Home solvin option:
**gruntz**
I actually read SPARE, So that was a gimme. SEXER I never heard of and at first I was sure it was wrong. Also had levY before DUTY. CAR FARE is definitely legit. I thought Levy was a last name in the Erie Canal clue. Liked the puzzle....
CARFARE is one word, not two, and specifically means passenger charge for public transportation. Look it up.
12 four-letter answers beginning with the same letter in a regular-size puzzle is actually insane.
I couldn't find a way into the NW so got underway in the NE at SHAM X SPARE. I was able to work backwards from EXIT into FREEWAY, which clued me in to the theme. After ON THE ROAD, I tried to guess the remaining two, but gave up when LANE CLOSed was too short and I couldn't make sense of the Xs. Enjoyed the ride!
Never would I have expected that SEXER would be a crossword gimme for me, but the other day I read a review of three books on backyard chicken-keeping, which included this indelible information: "Most birds (except waterfowl) don’t have penises but breed by joining their cloacae. The cloaca is an orifice that combines the functions of anus and birth canal in females and anus and sperm conduit in males. The only reliable way to tell the sexes apart is by the presence of a small protrusion in the cloaca of the male. People who know how to do this, called chicken sexers, hold the chicks upside down, squeeze open their cloacae, and look inside them. A 90 percent accuracy rate is good, though no chicken sexer is perfect."
A couple of Hidden Diagonal Word related notes:
Although the puzzle begins with an ALLY in the north, there is a Hidden Diagonal FOE in the south (off the F in 52D, UPFOR).
Also, the P shared by two 4-letter answers, 26D and 32A (ALPO/CLAP), is shared by two 4-letter Hidden Diagonal Words, PEER and PAIL. That's a busy P.
I'm usually addled by puzzles with visual clues, but not so much this time. I guessed TOLL BOOTHS off T _ _ L B O _ _ _ S, and quickly the revealer fell; and the crosses made the other theme answers pretty obvious.
Those were stumbling blocks for me too. And they seem such meh words that i’m not even interested in knowing what they actually mean
I actually didn’t have a hard time with this clue/answer. My mom’s best friend grew up in Illinois in the 20s-30s. Her dad was a sexer! All he did was determine the sex of baby chicks, separate them accordingly, and sell them. She said it was a good business to be in during the Depression.
I remember Phantom Tollbooth from grade school, too. Great book!
Wow, I did NOT get what was going on with this theme until I saw Rex's diagrams. The theme clues are shown properly in the .pdf "print edition", if any of you want to go see. But even the NYT website doesn't do it right. It requires some fussing, and using a fixed-width font (like Times, ironically), and they just couldn't be bothered, I guess.
It is a Thursday worthy idea, if the clues were handled right. Very fast for me at 12 minutes. Hands up for LEVY before DUTY at 20 across only to discover "Levy" in the SALT TAX clue. And I had a really baffling typeover at 38 down, where for "Case of emergency" seemed perfect for ALL CARS: you know, "Calling all cars, calling all cars, this is an emergency!"
Anyway, huge congrats to Paolo on a stunning victory. I have to admit though, I don't enjoy watching the current version of Jeopardy at all. So many odious clunkers of answers, like that very last one where none of them even tried to guess it.
What a witty poem by @RooMonster 8:15. Bravo, sir.
Roo
(Since no one has said "Neat", I figured I'd pat myself on the back. 🤣)
With you on GUNLAP and ADUE (and mostly with ADIN as well, though it’s starting to become a “vague memory of running into it in crosswords” word), and I’ll add GRAF. That was just an ugly area, and when I got to the end without happy music, I both knew my mistake must be there and didn’t care enough about terms/names I didn’t know to try to suss it out.
Predicted three stars (meh) versus two (ugh). Chalking up the deductions (1/2 point each) to disdain for the graphics in the clues and SEXER. And not offset for a 1/2 point addition for the lovely clue for ALL CAPS.
Pretty sure I had heard of that "job" but unhappily reminded here. Thanks, NYTXW (not). Maybe per Eric NC, sexers (and male chick euthanasia) will go the way of the GUN LAP, long since replaced by a bell.
Everything I know about tennis I learned from crossword puzzles and then promptly forgot.
That’s so Rex level wit right there…
Agree, @Lewis, that TAB was good. ERR was ridiculously good. A thousand times! You must be making that up.
I smiled at the word play in 30 A air, heir , and err. And I smiled a bit at 31 a shen I saw the answer not some sting like ogle. I had learned of sewers sometime long ago and did not ave the bad reaction that Re did/does.
Yeah, I could not see the traffic in those usual clues, but could "get" it once the answers came. Over all I enjoyed the puzzle and thought it medium easy for Thursday.
Glad to see comments re "gun laps" I'd never heard that term. Not a racing fan but I have seen racing movies.
@doghairstew And I for one thank you for your service. I've had worse jobs, but... not many. However, I imagine the SEXER is not the full scope of anyone's responsibilities running such an operation. What's more, there are necessary jobs regarding livestock that should rate as being much much grodier to the max than this. I salute you regardless.
As for those who ACTUALLY found this objectionable... The Boomers slapped society upside it's prudish head as part of their noble turn countering the culture for us lowly, slackerly Gen Xers for which we owe them muchly. I only wish I had enjoyed it more as it's clear that we're slowly returning to the tranny of polite little fictions. Get thee out of y'all's nunneries.
@Whatsername-Thanks for the tip. I'll try it the next time I see similar puzzle, if I can remember it that long.
The salt tax is incredibly interesting. It’s an early example of a US government leveraging a specific commodity to boost infrastructure. It had huge ramifications in the economy. The phenomenon touched on politics, civics, economics. It’s boorish to suggest that because you don’t find it interesting that it’s not. No one made you that the arbiter of worthiness.
BEATS!!!!
For Tao/Dao, I echo what MaxPuzz said, the linked website is incorrect when it talks about unvoiced t and voiced d. The difference is unaspirated vs aspirated. The initial consonant in tao/dao doesn't exist in English, so neither t nor d is inherently "better." It's true that Pinyin, the system that would make it dao, is by far the most used system nowadays worldwide, and in that system, tao is wrong because it should be dao, but non-Pinyin systems exist.
I lived for a while in the Ocala National Forest, the setting for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling. The home site that Rawlings wrote of is quite real, as was the family upon whom the Baxter family was based. I hiked the area, retracing the steps that Jody Baxter trod to the fishing hole that opens the story. I caught many fish at that spot, right ON THE ROAD that he crossed to get home.
There were no TRAFFIC JAMS, TOLL BOOTHS, LANE CLOSURES, or FREEWAY EXITS.
As a tennis player I loved ad in (could also be ad out if 5 letters) and Graf. She is one of the all time greats
Phantom tollbooth and best in show in the same post 🔥💝
But it exists. And it's got people like you to let people like me know it exists and what kind of "evangelist wackos" might have created it. Now I'll have to go do some research. Is that a bad thing?
Carfare is, indeed, a thing. But I’m like you in that I always said cab fare.
I hear that Sonny Corleone's ghost is upset about TOLLBOOTH.
Enjoyed this puzzle - I actually used the diagram of 49A as a clue! I had to look up OCALA and as a result abandoned poll for SALT TAX. TIL about SALTTAX and was reminded about DUTY ( tariff did not fit)
I’ve been a plant eater for many years now but it seems to me that if you eat chicken and eggs you need to get over the fact that there are SEXERs. @doghairstew says it perfectly. I have no objection to eating eggs from happy hens like that, raised with no difficult roosters! And thanks for the info EricNC
“Never use a preposition to end a sentence with ;-)”
An easy out - Never use a preposition to end a sentence with, you idiot.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Paolo’s romp and was happy he won. He was a great competitor and oh-so smart!! On to the next!!
After finishing today’s puzzle and reading the blog, the word “sexier” caught my eye—I’d never heard of it. But then, I was brought up short while shortly later I was reading the book titled “The Postcard,” an English translation of a French novelby Anne Berest. On page 113 I read the following: “The naturalis, Ephraim’ s brother. The one who patented the method for determining the sex of baby chickens.” The novel is based on the lives of a real Jewish family from the 1920s to the present. It’s a stunning book and very emotional. And what a weird coincidence related to the clue in today’s puzzle. Worth researching.
STILL can't figure out any of those visual clues except the tollbooth one; never heard of ADIN or GUNLAP, but figured that since the final go-round is often the most stressful lap of a race (hence it takes a lot of "guts"), maybe it's called the GUT LAP. And since ADIT made every bit as much sense to me as ADIN, that's what I went with.
I apologize for the typos in my post above. The word was “sexer” in the puzzle, and the quotation was on page 316.
Rex asked about the two systems that were and are used to represent Chinese in the Roman alphabet. He mentioned the old one created at the end of the 19th century by two Scotts. It was apparently a bad system, useless for teaching Chinese children how to read. The modern system is called Pinyin. It was designed among other goals to help Chinese children learn to read. It lead to one of the greatest increases in literacy in human history. Peking old Beijing new. . TAO old Dao new. But Tao has been the manner we English speakers have been writing it since the Western World first learned about it. Most of us have decided to stick with the T. Some get upset but I argue we are not writing Chinese but English. Tao is a a word we took from Chinese and made part of English We can spell it however we want. That’s language.
Seeing the clue for 26 Down, "a brand in the pet aisle", I was watching 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' last night, so I was hoping the answer called for a ten letter answer, namely 'Wolf's Tooth'!!
First off, @MetroGnome, love the handle! And I chuckled at GUt LAP because it’s so apt. If you’re in the lead or anywhere close you certainly want to gut it out as my track coach used to yell. Good one.
Got the revealer with nothing filled in at all but needed crosses for all the themers - the clues just didn't make visual sense to me. That didn't take away the fun, though. Some very, very good cluing, i.e. the whole ERR thing, ALLCAPS, and I thought SALTTAX was absolutely great.
Growing up in New York City, I can say with 100% confidence that CARFARE is a thing. We used the term for both the bus and the subway. Taxis were indeed cabfare.
A funny moment when I was filling in ALLCAPS, I thought I was answering the clue right next to it - Source of a large print!! :o)
I had to run every vowel for the "U" in GUNLAP. Like others, that whole section of ADIN, ADUE was pretty crunchy for me.
Now looking at the clues for the themers, if I squint really hard, I can kinda/sorta see what they were getting at. But during the solve, I didn't have the energy to stick with it and bother as the downs did their job. So I enjoyed this one.
Nice work on this, Dario. Thank you!
Another crossword-relevant Chinese transcription wrinkle I've seen crop up is Lao TSE (Chinese Postal, maybe?) vs Lao TSU (Wade-Giles) vs Lao ZI (Pinyin). I've definitely seen TSE and TSU in past fill and wouldn't be surprised if ZI shows up at some point.
Y’all know I’m no spring chick. I’m also one with a very eclectic childhood. My Great Uncle Jess unsuccessfully tried to teach me how to “tell the boys from the girls” when he had a new warming room full of hatchlings. He also told me it’s a sin to help bring something into this “cruel old world” and decide it’s “not good enough to live” unless it was suffering. He never killed the “boys” and gave them away instead. He would also never have used the word SEXER, and may not have ever even uttered the word sex out loud in his whole life. He was gruff and all business, used to things his own way, and as I aged, I also saw he was very lonely. I never knew his wife, my Great Aunt Dodie who died in childbirth along with their only child long before I ever came along. He never remarried, and lived a solitary life. He was also a revered rural chicken farmer deep in southern Ohio. He taught me lots of things, my favorite of which was how to spit between my front teeth and whistle really loud without needing to put your fingers in your mouth. Needless to say, I adored him.
When my aged and somewhat infirm eyes saw the first theme clue I groaned out loud. Hard pass. My husband’s graduate work in education included lots of work on individual learning styles back when that area of educational research was really new and growing. He had me take bunches of standardized tests to determine what learning and teaching methods most assisted me in understanding and retaining material. Bottom line, words please. Don’t show me a bunch of typeface characters arranged in someone’s idea of a picture and expect me to understand it. Consequently, I ignored the graphics and completed this one easily as a themeless.
The reveal though was a highlight. I’ve read ON THE ROAD several times. That and “Blue Highways “ by William Least Heat-Moon are lifetime favorites. Larry and I often camped or RVed our way across the less traveled routes of this country accompanied by these authors. Entering ON THE ROAD felt like a warm full-body hug from the past, and I promised myself to start looking for some “three calendar” diners as I explore the lesser traveled roads of Wine Country.
So sure, the theme answers are indeed things you might encounter ON THE ROAD. The theme works verbally. I shall leave to those familiar with the drawings to opine with specificity on their efficacy as thematic material.
I had some slow spots with a few clues that seemed a bit tough , and about 25% into the solve, I did notice a huge number of short, regular fill beginning with “A” as @Rex mentioned. But I had a lovely time wending my way through the ELM and ASH filled LEAs of the grid. It felt comfortable and nostalgic like one of the hundreds of our ventures ON THE ROAD.
I purposefully haven’t been reading the comments here for the last few days because I watch a day late on Hulu, and I expected spoilers. I’m here now because I just watched the finale. Hooray for Paolo!!!!! I’m so happy for him! First player in the current format to sweep the TOC. His complete dominance reminded me of why the daily doubles are the key. In 3 games, I think he got either 7 or 8 of the 9 possible. His victories were all “runaways:” no one could catch him in final jeopardy. Amazing!
(Glad to be able to get back to reading the comments here.)
I remember “carfare” for the trolleys in Boston. (And I don’t think I’m THAT old!)
Not that it matters, but I believe the chart is better classified as a stacked bar chart instead of a heat map. A heat map usually refers a colored overlay (the heat) superimposed on a two-dimensional graphic (the map). It can show trends for eye or mouse tracking on a web page, or traffic patterns in an area, or even actual heat, as on a weather map.
@CDilly52, your stories each day are really great. Worth waiting for.
@CDilly52 9:01 PM
So many colorful characters in your life. I'm with @okanaganer and always love catching your post at the end of the day.
"Minari" is a beautiful movie. That saved "sexer" for me.
@okanaganer: 1. AMEN re Paolo’s sweep. And we get to look forward to his appearance on Jeopardy Masters! Among other areas, those long combo answers were tough! 2. You are too kind. After over 60 years of almost daily solving, crosswords are about the emotional experience for me. I am so happy to have found this blog about a decade ago. Like a vast majority of the contestants on Jeopardy, the crossword community is full of smart, fun, generous spirited folks like you.
@Anon 8:46AM and others not old enough to remember “street cars.” CARFARE comes from the days before buses, when non-train local transportation was in street cars. Powered either by electrical tracks or via electricity provided by overhead wires that connected to things that looked like overgrown television “rabbit ears” - also likely unknown to you except via movies and photos and stories from old folks like me, they provided in er city transportation efficiently. The clue is perfectly acceptable, just not yet known to some of you. My passion for crosswords has lots to do with my love of learning. I hope to learn something new with every solve.
Good job with the CARFARE issue @Seastate5! I was late to the party as usual, and duplicated in another reply. Be proud to show your age, my friend; sure beats the alternative!
on same page wasted opportunity whole puzzle could have been Beatnik poet clues relating to On the Road as in the Book - deriving meaning from /// ::: etc is headache inducing just like Traffic - On the Road is not about TRAFFIC honk!
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