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Hopelessly internet-brained / TUE 3-17-26 / Indigo dye / "It's super-appreciated!," in a modern initialism / Home to Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection / Title girl in a Beach Boys hit / Sci-fi character who says "Your father, he is" / Deli order that may lead to pungent breath / Midwest capital named for a president
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Constructor: Kiran Pandey
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
 |
| [22A: Sci-fi character who says "Your father, he is"] |
Theme answers:
- GIRL SCOUT COOKIES (17A: Thin Mints and Tagalongs)
- SAUSAGE LINK (26A: One in a breakfast chain?)
- LSD TAB (37A: Dose dropped for a trip)
- HIGH PROFILE (47A: Likely to attract attention, as in a criminal case)
An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's web browser. Cookies are placed on the device used to access a website, and more than one cookie may be placed on a user's device during a session.Cookies serve useful and sometimes essential functions on the web. They enable web servers to store stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) on the user's device or to track the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). They can also be used to save information that the user previously entered into form fields, such as names, addresses, passwords, and payment card numbers for subsequent use.
• • •
And before I got to the (admittedly great) revealer, I was slogging through some rough stuff, starting with ANIL, which made me stop short (14A: Indigo dye). "Really, we're doing ANIL? On an easy Tuesday puzzle in the year of our lord 2026? Back to 1999 with you, ANIL!" Certain words scream "crosswordese!" and boy that is one of them. Not hard (if you have been solving for decades), but unappealing. IDED and HST and CUDI and a handful of other repeaters made the top of this puzzle unpleasant to hack through. The most off-putting thing in the grid, for me, was TYVM (short for "thank you very much") (32A: "It's super-appreciated!," in a modern initialism). I think I'm not TERMINALLY ONLINE enough to appreciate it. I think it's more often used sarcastically, as when you are ironically defending yourself, the way you might use the full phrase ("thankyouverymuch"). Here is a random example that Wordnik scraped from some dank corner of the internet:
In my day (yes, I'm old and I know it, tyvm) our public school back in Ohio had FRUIT machines where we could buy apples, oranges or banana's.
and another:
Our blog isn't "DEAD", 'tis just on a prolonged hiatus tyvm :/
But it also just means regular old "thank you very much." I type thx, but have never been able to bring myself to use "ty" ("... who's Ty?"), and have definitely made the leap to "tyvm." Anyway, this initialism is a real enough thing, I just hate it. The rest of the non-theme fill in this grid is mostly blah. Inoffensive. OK. ALL THUMBS got a metaphorical "thumbs-up" from me as I plunked it down in the grid, and MOVIE CLIP and AVANT-GARDE are both rock solid. Kind of weird to have extra, non-thematic internet stuff going on in the grid (stuff like BLOG POST (40D: Bit of internet writing), or SENT (as clued) (61D: Label that's typically between "Inbox" and "Drafts")). Always seems more elegant when theme-related material stays contained entirely within the theme answers. Overall, this is a neat idea, semi-clunkily executed.
Bullets:
- 10D: Home to Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection (TOKYO) — this probably should've been my "Word of the Day." You may never have heard of Shibuya Crossing, but I'm fairly sure that if you've seen any shots of TOKYO on movies or television, you've seen it. It's as iconic as Times Square.
Shibuya Scramble Crossing (渋谷スクランブル交差点, Shibuya sukuranburu kōsaten), commonly known as Shibuya Crossing, is a scramble crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It is located near Shibuya Station in Shibuya, a major commercial and entertainment district in Tokyo. It has been described as the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing during a single green light cycle. Inaugurated in 1973, the intersection is a popular tourist destination and a widely recognized symbol of the city of Tokyo through its frequent appearances in television, film, and other media. (wikipedia)
- 5D: Old-fashioned, for one (COCKTAIL) — in my NYTXW spreadsheet, I track not only Star Wars references ("Hello
darknessYODA my old friend..."), but COCKTAIL-related answers as well. I like the latter a lot better. I love a good Old-fashioned, though we don't really make them at home (we're more Manhattan and Manhattan-variant people, although my favorite COCKTAIL is the 100-Year-Old Cigar). Not sure this is the recipe my wife uses, but it'll do—from Difford's:
 |
| [I don't even like cigars, but this drink ... !] |
- 12D: Like patrons at the door of a "21+ only" nightclub, informally (IDED) — was looking for some kind of "informal" word for "adult" and was prepared to be very annoyed by some horrible new slang like "ADDO" or something. "Thankfully" the answer was just IDED (I say "Thankfully" quote-unquote because IDED is terrible ... but at least it's understandable)
That's all. See you next time.
P.S. All my love to my beautiful wife, Penelope, who is leaving (on a jet plane) tonight to attend her aunt's memorial in NZ. The cats and I will miss her. (The flight was supposed to leave yesterday but weather conditions in NYC made that impossible.) Oh, and thank you all very much (hey, TYVM!!!) for yesterday's condolences.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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110 comments:
Monday Easy on Tuesday. Nothing to hate here, but nothing to love either.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
sOdA before COLA for the 5A beverage
brave before STOIC at 9A
One WOE, the 19D rapper Kid CUDI
I don’t love the revealer - it fits no doubt but a joyless reminder of everyday culture. The themers work and are cute enough - overall well filled for an early week grid.
Up, Up & Away
16 wide gets you those two spanners - I like the symmetry. Second sighting of RHONDA recently. AVANTE GARDE, ALL THUMBS, ONION BAGEL are all solid. LSD TAB dead center is unfortunate. TYVM for the cigar recipe - I will have at it this weekend. Tonight will be Jameson and Guinness.
Madame George
Enjoyable enough Tuesday morning solve.
Rest easy Dolores
Liked it better than Rex did. Saw GIRLSCOUTCOOKIES right away from the "G" in SAGA, so I had an easy time (only needed a vowel run for CUDI). I'm no techie (understatement!), but the computer-related answers were mostly inferable from the straightforward cluing.
Maybe I am too online, but I always thought it was “TYSM”, not “TYVM”, and “chronically online” rather than terminally!
Thx, Rex (I can’t bring myself to write TYVM), for the quaint image of a print magazine devoted to the then-very-young Internet. It’s like a medieval monk copying out a manuscript about Gutenberg’s new invention.
Liked it, but, as OFL pointed out, the theme endings were a bit arbitrary relative to being "terminally online".
Speaking of Terminally Online, I listen to Pod Save America and am a paid subscriber, so I get a weekly bonus podcast titled....Terminally Online. The hosts and producers of PSA pick a topic related to how online they were that week, and it can go down some weird and often hilarious paths. When I saw the revealer, my brain immediately jumped there.
May I add my sincere condolences to your family.
No idea why they felt "my man" was necessary to add to the clue for ITS.
I have mentioned twice very recently that I'm all for list themes; unfortunately, this one was not enjoyable. In particular, TAB seems a weak entry.
Interesting to learn that Rex serves his cocktails naked.
It's definitely chronically online..as someone chronically online
Loved the Elsbeth crossword tournament you mentioned yesterday.
Nice little brain pings as I uncovered the grid, such as when the clue for TOKYO shot me into imagining the world’s busiest traffic crossing, or when the gorgeous term for film and video – “moving image” – a term I haven’t thought of in a long time – appeared.
The beauty continued. Not only in answer – STOIC, ODDITY, AVANTGARDE -- but also in the lush lineup of loveliness embedded in the clues: “squirt”, “unflinching”, “pungent”, “sprawling”, “relinquish”, “cosmic”, and “snippet”. Wow!
Standouts such as themes, clever clues, and zingy answers are often the stars of a puzzle, but the less easily noticed supporting cast of images and memories that clues and answers ping, and splendid words, add richness. I certainly felt that richness today.
So, much delight in the box for me, Kiran. You elevated my day, and thank you!
Not an interesting theme, yet I liked the puzzle.🎈🎈🎊🎊
I thought while solving this that there was a pretty weak connection between the theme choices and the reveal, so I’m not surprised that Rex commented on that - but, at the end of the day, close enough, right ?
I would add CASA to ANIL and TYVM to complete today’s “goofy looking trifecta” of answers, but I guess they are little more than necessary evils. Unfortunately, they were not sufficient to prevent Shortz from indulging in his Star Wars fetish yet again.
Are you keeping track of what I owe you for the hallucinogens?
LSDTAB
A dyslexic spy:
ACAI agent
Fair maiden: What hast thee DUNST with the spices I put together?
(Wife gestures towards a bowl on the counter.)
Ay, there's the RUB.
Commandment for someone who hates ONION BAGELs:
Honor thy poppy and thy sesame.
General bagel commandments:
Thou shalt only toast thy bagel using the toaster's bagel setting.
Thou shalt not place lox on thy cinnamon-raisin bagel, for it is an abomination unto me.
I forget the rest. About 25 years ago I made up the "Ten Commandments of Bagels" and sent it into the New Yorker. Expect to hear back any day now.
Agree with you on ANIL, and I felt this was Monday, but can we talk about the clue for GAS? Reading it made my molars hurt!
NO PROBLEM WITH ANIL HERE - although "Spelling Bee" won't accept it.
Hey All !
16 wider, fairly easy/quick solve. Looking for a St. Patrick's Day theme, but alas, not to be found. The Midi has one, though I need to go back to ferret out the Theme
The Revealer here is off to my ears. Oh wait, just figured it out as I was typing that sentence. TERMINALLY, as in the ONLINE things are at the ends of the Themers. The silly brain was thinking TERMINALLY as in ended, or constant. (Although, Constant might work also.)
Anyway, slow brain aside, liked this one. Some Long Downs interspersed through the grid. Fill decent, no real hold-ups.
Hope y'all have a great Tuesday, and a great St. Patrick's Day!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
63D: What is this nonsense?
There is no "MY" in my DBA. And the "ITS" is always elided as 'S.
Despite knowing all the words to the song and singing along for 30 years or more, I somehow only today learned it is Space Oddity and not Space Odyssey. My mind is blown.
I agree with Rex about the theme, but disagree about the solidity of MOVIE CLIP. Much more common to say just CLIP.
I thought it was a welcome relief from so many recent puzzles with really obscure clues and some stupid ones leading to “Oh, hi,” which should be banned forever.
I thought the weak connection of the theme answers as a feature not a bug. That if you have terminally on line brain you will see any terms as being related to the internet, even if they don't appear to have a strong connection to each other.
I think FILE is the terminal part of HIGH PROFILE, not PROFILE, since a FILE is a thing you would find online.
Liked it VM more than Rex. Perfectly fine theme and revealer, above average fill for a Tuesday.
Even had some whooshes with AVANTGARDE and, a few seconds later, MOVIECLIP. Gotta love those long Downs; IMO they can make the puzzle.
Wish that I could ever eulogize a loved one as well as your wife did, with grace and feeling. Hope you celebrate her aunt's life, and continue to feel her presence in your own lives
Nice to start the day off with a chuckle,TYVM!
Never heard of HST! Anyone else?
Hey Rex! I’ve got a good one for the FAQ. Would love to know how you know the frequency of word usage, such as ORONO from the Monday puzzle. Who tracks all this? How are the answers input? Is this process automated and where can we look it up? Maybe it would make a nice “Learn More” page or some such.
Thanks!!!
Sounds like on a scale of 1-10 the Indigo dye answer would get ANIL.
The PGA tour is trying to crack down on drug use among the players, so they've started keeping a HIGHPROFILE. It's divided into parts depending on the specific drug allegedly involved. Behind the LSDTAB you'll find a lot of acid comments regarding auras around TEES and IRONs.
And speaking of IRON, isn't there IRONY to the near juxtaposition of these words in the puzzle? (Answer: No the isn't, but "clumsiness" wouldn't make for good bad humor).
MADISON my list of all-time great magazines. I guess IMAGE revealing when I admit this, but What, me worry?
Didn't we just get IDED by the 3/15 puzzle?
Fun puzzle. YODA man, Kiran Pandey.
AVANT GARDE had to rescue me from TYsM because was being truly appreciative and not in a sarcastic way. Thank you soooo much!
I have to wonder how many non-Vikings fans can remember FRAN Tarkenton?
With sOdA in place at 5A, I was imagining the 5D clue, "Old fashioned, for one" had something to do with sOCrates?
Thanks, Kiran Pandey!
I was just talking about the problem with making new mixed drinks is that most require a trip to the liquor store to buy a whole bottle of some rarity, which will only be used this once and sit on your shelf for a decade. THIS CIGAR recipe requires me to buy 5 bottles (I have the bitters) if I’m not allowing substitutions, for 1/12th or 1/6th oz portions, lol. As delicious as it looks, I won’t be making this at home, TYVM….Damn it, now I want one.
RP: I missed the blog yesterday but wanted to extend my sincere condolences on the loss of your beloved aunt. Very thoughtful of you to include the link to Penelope’s tribute. After reading it, I felt like I had met a kindred spirit. May you both comforted by your warm and happy memories of her.
Fran Tarkenton also was a NY Giant, so NYT readers will remember him.
@Teedmn, I grew up in a household of Green Bay Packer zealots, and you can believe I remember Fran Tarkenton as a lethal threat. For fun, my brother and I used to re-enact plays from the TV show NFL Highlights in our yard that featured phenomenal quarterback pass plays. Naturally, Bart Starr was most heavily featured, but Tarkenton and Y.A. Tittle also frequently appeared (Starr to Hornung; Tittle to Gifford, Tarkenton to...can't remember - he was probably scrambling :) ).
I feel that we may be distant cousins. Thanks for the laughs.
Harry S Truman
A fine Tuesday, I thought, with solid theme answers plus ALL THUMBS, AT STAKE, ONION BAGEL, GLORIES, ASTRAL, APACHES, IMAGE x MOVIE CLIP. I needed the most crosses for the reveal, a phrase that had somehow escaped me until now.
Going to go Anon here, but have to comment on Tarkenton’s time as a Giant. @Carola has it right, he was more known as a scrambler than a passer. In fact he was known as something of a danger to his receivers—his longer passes were so slow his ends were often smashed as they tried to catch the ball.
CUDI? TYVM? Crosses to the rescue. Otherwise knew most of this stuff, except the revealer, which was news to me. Nice phrase though.
I'll put in a good word for ANIL, which if you're going to solve crosswords you might as well know. Your curriculum should include some of the classics, after all.
Nice breezy Tuesday, KP. Just Kept Putting in on thing after another and bang I was done. Thanks for all the fun.
Hard to believe any football fan over the age of 50 wouldn’t know Fran Tarkenton. When he retired, he was the all-time leader in TD passes, passing yards, and completions. And even younger fans probably know the name if they have even a little interest in NFL history.
I have never heard of a 100 Year Old Cigar as a drink and it looks hecka fussy to make - especially for a home beverage! sounds delicious tho
? Harry S. Truman
Loosey-goosey theme but in the ballpark and allowed some interesting answers. Had some trouble with proper names but crosses came to the rescue. Re the TOKYO crossing, this is not true only for pedestrians. Tokyo has some of the world’s most awsome automobile traffic intersections/crossings as well. Lining up opposite 5 or 6 lanes of cars about to respond to a change of lights in a close-order drill is an interesting experience.
For some reason this morninng my brain just would not equate "old-fashioned" with "cocktail," so I had SOCKTAIL crossing SODA for the longest time. It wasn't until I tried COLA and *saw* the word cocktail that it all clicked. I really don't like it when my brain has these momentary lapses!
You can tell I didn't really follow football - I did not know Fran Tarkenton played for the Giants. And I can't picture who Tarkenton would have been throwing to. (I know he was good at scrambling). My fave Viking was Alan Page, who became a judge and was always seen cheering on runners during the TC marathon and other races near the lakes.
Y ese es el truco.
As 🦖 says, kinda weak theme entries for such a cool reveal. And any puzzle with ANIL in the northwest corner should get A NIL on its scorecard. Not to be judgy and rude or anything, but not my favorite Tuesday. Probably because the editors were confused by the tee-hee-ery. You know how they are with their LSD and their butts.
We had a fun couple days with humorless Anonymoti making BLOG POSTS intended to straighten me and @egs out. Apparently their THUMBS weren't working and they couldn't just flip on to the next post. We'll see if their sage wisdom works. When you're mansplainy on the internet, I doubt you get the results you're hoping for, but then again, when you're being funny, you sometimes get yelled at, so we're all living with our choices. And, note for the future, if you're yelling at @egs, you are definitely wrong.
Hard no to ONION BAGELS. I mostly support raisin bagels with a sweet flavored cream cheese like maple walnut. And if we're being honest, isn't the bagel mainly a transportation medium for the stuff you'd feel guilty about eating on its own? They make green chile bagels here in Albuquerque and it'll fry your face off.
Our ROBINS start a couple of hours before dawn. I think they might be vampire robins.
😫 IDED.
People: 13 {on a Tuesday}
Places: 3
Products: 3
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 27 of 79 (34%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: LSD. Pain in the butt.
Uniclues:
1 Silent auction item on Dagobah bachelor night.
2 Me as HOST, dead animal as PEST, resulting in a pain in the....
3 Tin foil trees.
4 Line you've crossed when you finally decide to try fingerstyle guitar.
5 At the end of the day, it's all just advanced beer pong.
6 Tweet tweet tweet {Google translate: We don't respond to anonymous white men in life or on the internet.}
1 AT STAKE: RUB YODA
2 SAUSAGE LINK BAD
3 ANANT GARDE FIRS (~)
4 ALL THUMBS LIMIT
5 COCKTAIL IRONY
6 ROBIN BLOG POST
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: All utterances by right-wing wackos, it seems. WIENIE-ISMS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TYVM 😀
I have a couple of theories on this.
The first is that along with the tremendous and rapid growth over the past decade of the NYT Games section (now called an "ancillary business") has been a commensurate growth of Rex Parker Enterprises. There is well-grounded speculation that there there is now been created an entire division, housed in a secret underground bunker on the Binghamton campus, that is tasked with tracking word usage frequency and staffed by recent software engineering graduates from Binghamton who have been unable to get jobs fas coders once AI took them all - and being paid nothing even close to what they had hoped to make as coders. But none of this is confirmed since the company is privately and closely held, and, it is rumored, requires employees to sign a strictly enforced NDA.
The second theory is that Michael has a subscription to XwordInfo.com (or the like), which has a complete searchable database of all NYTimes crosswords, enabling users to find such information in an instant and with a few keystrokes.
Though the first theory is more in tune with our times and our appetite for secret societies and conspiracies, I think the second is the more likely one. :)
@Jnlzbth 10:50 AM
Well, honestly, isn't the purpose of a cocktail to sock tail?
100 y.o. CIGAR: Horrible waste of five bottles of expensive liquor IMHO
ANIL perfectly clued as the active ingredient in Indigo, which expensive until synthetic aniline dyes were invented in the 1850s,
Back in the good old days, people didn't work at computers; they worked at computer terminals. These terminals were essentially keyboard that were all hooked up to one big happy mainframe computer that was located in the coldest room in the building.
I think the word "terminal" here is an intentional and punny allusion to that.
So “Taser” is noted for its awfulness (yesterday) but “LSD tab” is not. Not today and not ever on this wonderful site,as far as I know. It’s a dangerous drug!
Nobody except you and your capital letters did any yelling. There was no manspining either. There was you gratuitously name calling, but that’s your schtick. It’s. Real knee slapper. As for my being humorless, a couple of publications disagree. But hey, do tell me more.
16 wide grid today, took me 9 minutes, never felt hard. Loved seeing GIRLSCOUTCOOKIES and especially the revealer TERMINALLYONLINE. I agree that rest of the themeset is not as exciting as the top and bottom, but overall the fill is nice and clean and it was an enjoyable solve, so I'd give it ****. Thanks, Kiran! Enjoyed your puzzle!
Glad I'm not the only one, definitely plopped TYsM right in.... eventually fixed it.
Cool don’t have one, Steve.
Burtonkd, I know what you mean about the $$$ multiple-bottle situation. Our liquor cabinet is stacked and we use all the ingredients in the 100yocigar pretty regularly but if I lived alone or didn’t really really like experimenting, I don’t know that I’d need much more than rye, carpano antica, ango, and the good cherries to satisfy my cocktail cravings 🍒 🥃
It's Harry S Truman, not Harry S. Truman--he always wrote it that way because it did not stand for anything, so the S was his middle name.
Easy-medium seems right.
No costly erasures and CUDI and TOYKO were it for WOEs.
Not much junk, lackluster theme…didn’t hate it.
OK, you can't just do the "Star Wars" thing on days with a Star Wars refernce. That's cheating.
Also, the revealer's clue would be better without "the end of..." The answers are TERMINALLY online, i.e., they end with online phrases! That's the point!
Pretty good puzzle imo.
I have to speak up for ANIL; it was more or less the foundation of the modern chemical industry. There's a reason the big German (and, notoriously, Nazi) chemical company was named IG FARBEN.
There is famously no period after the middle S because its it not an abbreviation for a middle name, It is merely an S, pure and simple,
Nope.
Did this in my normal downs-only Tuesday time range. And I still don’t get it. I mean I sort of get it but it seems weak. I get that COOKIES, LINK, TAB, and PROFILE might all have something to do with being online, but does this make a worthy theme?
What am I missing here? Hoping to find out when I read Rex in the morning.
****
Okay. It’s morning. I have read Rex now and I am confused as to why he gave this puzzle, which he seemed to dislike, 3 stars. I’m not in favour of star rating systems, but if I was, I would give this one 2: a star for ALL THUMBS and a star for AVANT GARDE. Nothing else was really working for me.
I began that discussion with a comment of my own. I was not anonymous.
Having followed the discussion that ensued, I stand by my original comment.
"Old-fashioned" is an adjective, which takes a hyphen. An "old fashioned" (the cocktail) is a noun, which doesn't require a hyphen, though it appeared with one here. That might have been your issue.
I kinda liked that clue. It was really odd. Please keep in mind that I don't live in your country so Citgo is not something I see often. Almost never, in fact. But I kept repeating that clue to myself, almost like a mantra. I close my eyes. I'm on a U.S. fishing trip. On a long strip of 4-lane asphalt when I see a sign, way ahead, that causes me to check my fuel gauge: Citgo: GAS: of course. I think it was the last thing answer I entered before closing up shop last night.
Sorry I missed the Anony wars. Yelling at you I could understand but at egs? Shocking! But hey, they have to be humored occasionally, and you’re just the guy to do it. My part of the country is not known for bagels, but I do occasionally get some from Panera Bread (or St. Louis Bread, as it’s called here), and you’re absolutely right about it being a healthy-looking vehicle for the secret guilty pleasure. I was heartbroken when they discontinued their sesame bagel, but I still manage to find something to put under the big tub of honey walnut cream cheese. Yum.
@egs. Ha! I'm not sure you'd want in to my crazy relatives, but I'm honored by the thought.
Page was something!! Not only did he cher the runners, he srendaded them with brass. I think it was a tuba but vould’ve been a horn.
I have seen both "chronically" and "terminally" but I have never seen TYVM in the wild. I plopped in TYSM without a second thought.
Anon 10:29
Nonsense. Tarkenton was known as a scrambler. In fact he was widely acknowledged as the bery best scrambler. But while scrambling means running, it’s a particular kind of running. Running behind the line of scrimmage to evade defenders with the putpose of gaining time to thtow a pass. Today, commentstors sometimes corrupt the original meaning and use scrsmnke to describe a run down feld. But that’s a modern phenomenon and usage. In tge 60s and 70s scramble was strictly used a term to exain a QB eunning beinnd the line of scimmage in order to pass.
Tarkenton’s passing numbers proof that his scrambling was in fact doleky on the service of his passing
Gen Z solver here... definitely "chronically online"...
@Gary. Just for clarification, do your thumbs work? I mean, why don’t you scroll posts you don’t like? Good for the goose, good gor the gander and the Gary. Asking for a friend. TIA.
A TASER is awful, though less awful than a gun, I suppose. It is a weapon designed to inflict pain. LSD is not.
@RP, I see your Manhattan in emoji form:)
Kind of a blah theme for me. There are a few other words that would have worked: SERVER, CODE, etc.
Someone mentioned that in the good old days, we didn't sit at a computer, we sat at a TERMINAL and the computer was in a different room. Well, the first computer course I took in 1977, the computer was actually hundreds of kilometres away... on the other side of the Coast Mountain range, in Burnaby (near Vancouver). Oh, and we used punch cards to write our programs.
GIRL SCOUT COOKIES makes me sad... it has to be about 2 decades since they've come to my door. And I live in a nice neighborhood!
@Anon 11:01
😂👍
I'm opting for the first theory.
Roo
Yes!
Otis Redding, "Help Me, Rhonda," "Space Oddity," LSD tab, Fran Tarkenton: this puzzle has me flashing back to the '60s, and, while I have no personal objection to that (I'm a boomer myself), it does seem a bit dated. At least you have Kirsten Dunst and Kid Cudi referenced; neither of them are exactly kids anymore, but at least they're more current popular culture references.
Very nice Tuesday thank you! Never heard of CUDI or DUNST or FRAN but the crosses did their job.
Last time I checked ANIL was not in Spelling Bee, but you can now suggest a word.
@Whatsername 12:06 PM
It was quite a weekend! It was kind of like going to see Pagliacci, only there were a lot of sad clowns on stage and the music was the theme song from Benny Hill.
Anonymous 7:17AM
I try to be careful about language pronouncements. It’s a big country and new terms as they are repeated billions of times start to vary. Language is never fixed. So if I knew one version, I wouldn’t assume the other is wrong The answer in the puzzle is clearly a thing.
Andy Freud
Me neither about that abbreviation.
TYVM four letters
THANKS! Five letters plus a symbol. And auto correct fills in some letters. Using the abbreviation risks confusion. For what?
I thought, could the answer be that? Nah. Came back to it and it was. Oh well.
a real drag and it's St. Patties day why is this puzzle here today its antithetical to puzzling - celebrate the fun holidays we get which are few and far between - this is such a bore
Liveprof
I am an onion bagel hater. I am also strange. I prefer untoasted bagels if they are good ones. People give me odd looks when I order them.
Jberg
About clip
I am not so sure.
FWIW Movie clip Google’s well.
I’d say it Tuezzed. Good idea for a theme and some interesting fill. I did have to write down the theme endings for it to make sense.
There were a fair number of old standbys - ANIL ACAI OGRE TEES CEDE OTOE et al. But some unexpected fun, like the clues for TOKYO and ROBIN. I didn’t know that about ROBUNs but there are some raucous little birds that sing just before dawn right outside my window.
Thank you, @Rex, for the link to your wife’s tribute to her aunt. Condolences on the loss of a very special person. Best wishes to Penelope for a safe and meaningful journey.
I was intrigued by the song in the tribute and found a couple of interesting videos and thought I’d share.
On Ilkla Mooar baht ‘at -history
REX Records version
I don't have a smart phone and don't spend a lot of time on my desk top PC so the theme was a tad nebulous for me. Even after reading Rex's Word of the Day, for instance, still not sure why it's called a COOKIE. (I did notice that just one COOKIE was not enough.) And I'm still not sure if it's PROFILE or just FILE that's part of the theme set. Maybe both?
I had a car when I was working in TOKYO in the 80s. The traffic was bumper to bumper in every lane everywhere all the time. I did fairly well adjusting to driving on the left. My most embarrassing incident came when getting some GAS. After filling up, I reflexively got back in and realized it was the wrong side! I was now sitting in the passenger's seat!! I tried to look nonchalant as I got back out and walked around to the other side but I'm sure some locals were (politely) amused.
With the initial H in place for 50D "Hospital concern" my first thought was HERNIA. Huh? HEALTH? No. Has to be some kind of illness or injury, right? Otherwise why would you even be in a hospital? When I see that a major expense for our economy is listed as "Health Care" I think no, not really. It's "Sickness Care".
Not bothered at all by the theme. Seemed connected enough for a Tuesday Thought the puzzle was very easy. But still entertaining.
I am tolerant of puzzles ( but of course Rex is a critic and he does so many puzzles. Very different vantage point. )
What gets under my skin is when people make flat statements like it’s chronically not terminally online or ‘s all good vs it’s .all good. As I said, big country. Lots of different ways of saying things.
HST. Surprised when someone asked about HST The clue did refer to FDR. So maybe Harry is being lost in the shuffle in schools? Computers AI career oriented education. Question of age( Boomer here)? After a decade reading this blog I am not usually surprised by what younger generations don’t know, about American history but this one is an exception.
HST - imagine what HST would have said if a Ukrainian oil and gas company had tried to hire his son as a consultant or if an aide had suggested that the US should mint a gold coin with his image on it???!!! There was a time when our leaders had integrity.
@Gary and (by simply finding himself in the same area), @egs, and the stentorian Mr. Piffle (aka Anonymous): please stop this unjust war. Since the attacks began gas prices have gone up 5 cents per litre here. Did you not think this through before you launched any attacks? Who would do a thing like that?
Love your wrong-side-of-the-car story. I've done the same in Ireland. "Just looking for my rental agreement in the glove box, OK?"
Re: Under your Skin There is a thing in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, researched and published about for decades by Amos Tversky and Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, called the familiarity heuristic. It is when we favor and give undo weight to the familiar over the novel (what we are unfamiliar with), and, at times, to the extreme that we accept the familiar unquestionably and reject the novel absolutely. This blog often has clear examples of that phenomenon, expressed so well in your second paragraph. Daniel Kahneman, a great intellect and, more importantly, a great man - who died recently - would give you two thumbs up. As do i.
sOCKTAIL is a gentler form of kickass.
Smooth sailing all the way through, with some clue nits for me. First, ANIL (crosswordese from forever) immediately took me back to my undergrad days at Illinois.
The T-Bird (Thunderbird actually) was a block away from the Smith Hall, the music school and especially during the day, the music school hangout. After our first meeting, a gaggle of us (that included a friend who became my husband) met most mornings for coffee. We’d grab a free copy of the Daily Illini and go to work on the crossword. I wormed my way into this group with ANIL. So of course I give it “nit free” status.
My first semester I had an 8:00 (yes AM) class M-Th. Afterwards, in desperate need of coffee, I asked others in the class where I could find some close and about half a dozen voices said “The Bird” in unison, and a habit was born.
My first trip there, I was afraid to take an empty seat at one of the tables full of obviously well acquainted people, so I went to the balcony - only crowded at night. My budget in 1969 didn’t run to a NYT subscription so I had to feed my daily crossword obsession with the easy puzzle in The Daily. It was a syndicated puzzle, just not the Times. I also made friends at the bookstore and sometimes I scored unsold NYTs that were a week or more old. No problem for me.
Anyway, that first morning, I had already blazed through the Daily’s puzzle and was about to start working on my music theory assignment, when I overheard a table of obviously good friends struggling over the puzzle. That particular day had some well known (to me) crosswordese and the table was populated by obvious neophytes. I mentally rolled my eyes through misses on olio, etui, and acer (very common those days), and chuckled at the “lightweights” downstairs. But they kept trying, failing and moving on. I hate not to finish and felt sorry for them.
The “dark blue dye” clue had them very frustrated. I hard comments like “Shouldn’t it be indigo? Obviously not, genius it’s only a 4 letter word. What? How about - nope, denim won’t fit either, ok move on again?”
I couldn’t stand it any more and leaned over the railing and said “Hey, the blue dye is ANIL., A-N-I-L.” I got the “hey thanks,” and heard a couple whispered “do you know her” comments and finally a cellist whose name I knew from a class we shared asked me to come and join the table. Crosswords are fabulous ice breakers and a great way to make friends. And find life partners. Good old ANIL.
Others aren’t so lucky today. OTOE, SHO, IDED (that just can’t help looking like a prank one would play on Caesar - yeah, last March, IDED him - got him good too), THO (despite the clue Howe’er trying to make it look all poetic) and ITS. Howe’er, I do give Kiran Pandey props for some goldmstar clueing even on the meh answers. Overall, as many have pointed out, some very clever clues today that enhanced my enjoyment - lots.
The theme, not so much. I’m not crazy about the phrase TERMINALLY ONLINE as a “thing,” and to me, there’s no true connection between the theme words and the reveal.
But reminding me of how I met my future husband (of 46 years) for the very first time? Literally priceless.
I appreciate your sadness. GIRL SCOUT COOKIES have historically avoided violation of the Internal Revenue Code prohibition against non-profit businesses engaging in an ongoing business enterprise in competition with for-profit businesses (because the non-profit's tax advantages unfairly affect and disadvantage the for-profit business) if it the business were not directly related to the mission of the organization by claiming that the sale of cookies had nothing to do with fund-raising and making money, but everything to do with the girl scout mission of teaching enterprise and responsibility. All of which has, in recent decades, become a big lie because girls scouts are no longer knocking at your door, but are delegating their parents to sell cookies at the workplace, and are now directly selling them in supermarkets and other places of business in competition with and on the same shelves as cookies marketed by for-profit companies. But no one wants to touch the girl scouts and call them out on this. It's a no win.
@Gary, I will add that if anyone is yelling at you, they are wrong as well! I know I don't have to tell you this, but please keep on being you!
I liked this more than @Rex did. I kinda appreciated the slight arbitrariness of the themers. The looseness gave me a TERMINALLYONLINE vibe.
Some really nice long downs, ALLTHUMBS, ONIONBAGEL, AVANTGARDE as well as a themer that was a spanner - GIRLSCOUTCOOKIES (fell with no letters at all, and spanners always impress me.) I even liked MOVIECLIP, though I usually say just "clip", but that doesn't make it a bad entry.
Had a bit of a hiccup as the revealer escaped my brain for a bit and with the initial "T" and "E", I rushed to put down *technicallyONLINE*. That held me up for a quick minute until LIMIT and AVANTGARDE came to the rescue and gave me what I needed.
If I use it at all, it's TYSM. But TYVM didn't bother me at all. And with that, TYVM Kiran for nice ride.
@Rex - my condolences to your wife, you and the whole family. A lovely remembrance that you shared yesterday. Safe travels to her.
Google Trends (and I) heartily agree it's TYSM...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=tysm,tyvm
@dgd. I'm responsible for the comment about " 's all good vs it’s all good' comment, and I appreciate your annoyance at such things.
What I was doing was satirically channeling a character from the "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" television series. The character's real name was Jimmy McGill, but he chose to do business as a sleazy lawyer using the name Saul Goodman, a play on 'S all good, man. Of course, the joke only works if you know the shows, so I apologize for taking that for granted. And your larger point is absolutely spot on!
What?????
What do posts on a tiny corner of the internet have to do with gas prices?
And unjust war?
It’s a difference of opinion. No one is being hurt.
Being a "gen Z solver" has nothing to do with this. The whole point is to understand the history and context for which "terminal" means something important.
@Anoa and Les; I've never driven in a "leftie" country. But I do have a lot of trouble remembering which side of my car the gas tank is on, which means I park on the wrong side of the pumps. I feel pretty stupid every time. And I swear, every new car I buy, it's on the other side.
@Anoa Bob, been there, done that! I intermittently worked over a five year period in London, and almost never needed to drive. We could either walk where we were going or a local colleague would drive. One weekend, I had a day and a half “off,” rented a car and drove to the Cotswolds to see friends from the US who were up there. We visited, had a lovely evening. They waved goodbye from their stoop as I walked to my rental, opened the wrong door, got all the way in and shut the door! The car was a Mini Cooper so I couldn’t slide across, jad to get out, walk around and shamefacedly wave goodbye again. could happen to anyone, right!
In NYC it’s gauche to order a bagel toasted. Especially in a real bagel place, where the bagels can still be warm.
YES!
@CDilly52 6:23 PM
Another gem.
I agree that the GIRL SCOUT COOKIE program has changed over the decades and lots of it not for the better. However, the door-to-door model ended largely because parents no longer felt safe allowing their young girls to go door to door and the troops and families did not have enough adults with adequate free time to accompany the scouts.
I was a scout from age 7 to 18 and worked as an adult volunteer with my state’s Council. The program tries not to compete inside stores, and the Girl Scouts organization actively does all it can to educate adults and specifically to discourage parents from doing the work. Individual parents and businesses make their own decisions whether to abide by the program’s rules and recommendations.
Things are harder now than when I was a scout (starting in 1957). Families don’t have the time to help their kids the way “it used to be.” We are all struggling to make ends meet. I recently moved to California and was curious and excited to learn how cookies “worked” here.
At least in my little corner of the Bay Area, the cookie website is exceptional. Cookies can be ordered and will be delivered to the purchaser. Mine were delivered by a young scout and two senior scouts who were driving. The website also tells folks where and when and which troops will be selling in person. I have not seen any scouts inside stores and asked managers at three large national grocery/big box stores about their procedures for permitting solicitation on premises. All were clear in the requirements and enthusiastic in their support of allowing scouts and other nonprofit agencies to solicit according to each business entity’s regulations. I am disgusted that manufacturers have copied a couple of the most popular varieties for commercial sale. I choose never to purchase those ersatz packages, and scouting has nothing to do the commercial decision directly to compete.
I wholeheartedly agree that it was a different experience for kids to go door to , and for consumers to order and then enjoy the anticipation building until the March delivery. I do not disagree that parents have participated inappropriately by taking over the sales responsibilities from their scouts, but they undoubtedly are simply trying to help their child pay for camp and the troop to add experiences. I can attest that the four times I purchased cookies this year at various shopping areas, the scouts were doing all the “business.” The adults were answering the scouts’ questions, one adult always stood by overseeing making sure the table had enough cookies set out, and often just visiting. The scouts handled all the financial tasks including credit cards or Venmo transactions, describing the cookies and even helped customers carry cookie boxes to their cars.
I firmly believe that Girl Scouts USA has done a very capable job of changing with the times and adapting the program, training the adults and the scouts to maximize both opportunities for personal growth and the local troops’ financial success. When I sold cookies door to door they cost $0.50 a box and my troop received $0.05 per box. Over the years, those figures rose some. Today, the cookies are $7.00 a box and here in NorCal, I was told that the troop receives about $0.50. As long as Girl Scouts continues to do what it can to adapt to changing conditions and social concerns, I shall continue to support and advocate for scouting. And for the cookie program. I also know that your local Council welcomes questions and concerns.
You too. And we here in the ‘hood understand that your caps are stylistic, not “screaming.” Has “internet speak” erased any basic understanding of elements of editorial style?! I am grieved that your humor offered only as opinion and absolutely Constitutionally protected has recently taken so much flak. I often recommend this blog as a solid source for learning about crosswords, and even moreso as a neighborhood of folks with one common and many uncommon interests, professions and avocations as well as a forum for sharing ideas and opinions and openly accepting our differences. I’m sorry that we’ve had a rash of inconsiderate Anonymous contributors lately. I accept divergent opinions and am always open to a frank discussion. I thrive on discourse. I’m even willing to learn and accept that an opinion of mine is proved wrong. But I do not tolerate the “absolutism” that has invaded our culture allowing, accepting and even encouraging shaming, bullying and summarily rejecting a person or their opinions. I’m really sorry you’re experiencing such behavior. You’re always welcome in my brain, but you may find it too frightening!
@egs, I have the same thought (and your comment beat me to the punch) every time IDED shows up.
@Anon 11:01 and Roo 2:07PM re “RP Enterprises.” I heard that if you press @Gary J’s uniclues and answers for the month of April onto LPs and play them backwards, you get the coordinates for the Binghamton bunker and an email to purchase a T-Shirt with the map of the campus that has a scratch-off spot that uncovers the proverbial “X” that marks the bunker’s spot. At the end of the recording, the mysterious voice speaking at warp speed gives all the disclaimers including that the map disappears after one washing, so be careful!
@ega, you have one of the sharpest “pun departments” in your big brain that I have ever encountered! Love your posts.
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