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Literally, "rumbling ghost" / THU 3-26-26 / It's found in a Nook / Mushroom sold in clusters / British actor and broadcaster Stephen / One inside the Trojan horse
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Constructor: Alex Murphy
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- POLEGRETIST (i.e. poltergeist) (17A: Literally, "rumbling ghost")
- FALLCRANEHES (i.e. fallen arches) (23A: Flat feet)
- GOLDETERNRIEVER (i.e. golden retriever) (33A: Pet renowned for its agreeableness)
- MARHAWKLBERG (i.e. Mark Wahlberg) (50A: "The Departed" actor)
Reneé Jane Rapp (born January 10, 2000) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She gained recognition for starring as Regina George in the Broadway musical Mean Girls (2019–2020). She reprised the role in the 2024 musical film adaptation and also contributed to its soundtrack. Rapp has also acted in the HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–2024). She released her debut EP, Everything to Everyone, in 2022, which was followed by her full-length studio album, Snow Angel, in 2023. Rapp's second album, Bite Me, was released on August 1, 2025. (wikipedia)
• • •
Look, I have been known to swear. I swear. I do. I try to keep it down, esp. outside the home, but ... well, I'm pretty sure I said "f*ck" in class just yesterday (I was talking about John Donne, whaddyagonna do, the guy likes to f*ck, or at least the narrator of "The Flea" does). So I'm not prudish when it comes to bad words. And yet a "rude gesture," esp. this rude gesture, as my revealer!? That was an unpleasant surprise. Imagine you're waiting on the revealer to see how it's going to make sense of the theme, and you finally get there, and the puzzle flips you off? (which is what I would call it, btw; FLIP THE BIRD always sounded cornily euphemistic to me). There was something really off-putting about it. But somewhere between my figuring out the "bird" part of the puzzle and the puzzle flipping me off, that's where things really GET UGLY, because the fill on this ... was probably actually more off-putting than the middle finger awaiting me at the end. Which is to say I was really primed to hate that revealer, because the puzzle had already been giving me garbage.
It's been a while since I endured anything as awful as the triple-"E" combination of ECIG, EINK, and EBATES. When I (finally) got EBATES, it's possible that I actually said "f*ck you*, so maybe the puzzle was within its rights to flip me off, I don't know. I just know that ECIG is a wince (37D: Vape pen), but a regular wince, a normal wince; EINK is an abomination (36D: It's found in a Nook), and EBATES is smushed and rotting somewhere underneath EINK (47D: Some online discounts). If any two of those had appeared in the grid together, I'd've been furious. EINK alone is nearly unbearable. EINK plus ECIG plus EBATES? A plate full of vomit. I do not understand caring that little about the basic surface-level appearance of your grid. Throw in a bunch of short gunk and the awful ASEASY, as well as a weird fascination with social outcasts (LEPER, PARIAH) and a bizarre cluster of proper nouns, including the unnecessary proper nounification of FRY, and I'm left just shaking my head. And as I was shaking my head, as I finally got to the end, the puzzle decided to flip me the bird. At that point, the "rude gesture" felt on-brand. Disappointing, but in keeping w/ the grid's personality. (You're probably thinking, "you know, there are actually four E-words in this puzzle—you forgot about ‘EMAIL ME,’” to which I say "why are you like this? Just let me move on!")
There were a few sticking points today, but not many. I was saved by ENOKI (crosswordese can be your friend!) in the north after I gummed things up with MANIA instead of ANTIC (7D: Zany behavior). That answer goes through the shaded squares in the first themer, and at that point I had no idea why the letters in there were rearranged the way they were, so things got stickier than they might have otherwise. Beyond that, all my trouble was in the FRY / RENEE / EBATES part of the puzzle (i.e. the south). No idea who RENEE Rapp is (perhaps because I never saw any of the newer incarnations of Mean Girls and also because RENEE Rapp hasn't been on the planet that long—she's my daughter's age). Also, instinctively wrote in Stephen REA at 58D: British actor and broadcaster Stephen (FRY). Live by the crosswordese, die by the crosswordese, I guess. I also weirdly struggled with YEARS. The clue doesn't exactly put you in regular-old earth time (66A: Solar revolutions). I was looking for something more ... space-y. More technical. Similar struggle with ARTERY. Normal enough word, just wasn't coming to me quickly from the clue (49D: Important route). Probably the worst moment of the puzzle, which ended up being a false alarm, was when I wrote in "MOI?" for 54A: Cry from Miss Piggy while simultaneously (soft-) shouting "Noooooooo!" because "MOI" had already been used earlier in a clue (26D: "Moi! Never!"). Turns out it's not "MOI?," it's "OUI," a "cry" I do not associate with Miss Piggy at all.
Bullets:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Bullets:
- 43A: One inside the Trojan horse (SPARTAN) — I teach the Aeneid every semester. The entirety of Book II is about the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy. And yet I had No Idea what this answer was supposed to be until the crosses made it undeniable. If Virgil mentions Sparta by name even once, I don't remember it. No one would ever say there are SPARTANs in the horse. "Beware Spartans bearing gifts"? No. Menelaus is in there, I think, and he's a SPARTAN king, so the clue isn't technically wrong, but it is wildly misleading. I'm not sure about the full cast of Greeks in the horse. I don't know that they are ever all named. But I know that they are not defined by their SPARTAN-ness, but by their general Greek-ness (the Trojan War involved the whole of Greece, not just Sparta). Hell, Odysseus is in that damned horse, and he's famously from Ithaka, not Sparta. You could've just said [Menelaus, for one]. That would've been accurate, and it would've made sense in context.
- 56D: Billy who had a #1 hit with "Mony Mony" (IDOL) — I know this guy and this song well, but for some reason initially called him Billy IDLE. Surely there's the germ of a puzzle theme idea here. ["White Wedding" singer between gigs?]?
- 8D: Dish that's often fermented before eating (POI) — three letters so I just took a guess and got it right. Crosswordese, back to the rescue!!! And it crosses ENOKI! (15A: Mushroom sold in clusters). A real crosswordese feast up there.
- 42A: Bottle Caps flavor (COLA) — the one big smiley face moment, for me. I have loved Bottle Caps since I was little. They used to come in these little green paper pouches with this freaky looking bottle cap creature on the cover, and I would rip the pouch open and pour out the Bottle Caps and then organize them by flavor and eat them in reverse hierarchy; that is, I'd eat the fruity ones first, as they were just OK (cherry, then orange, then grape) and then I'd get to the good stuff, the top-tier caps: COLA and root beer. If I were a dragon I would sleep atop not a pile of treasure, but a pile of COLA and root beer Bottle Caps. And good luck to any Hobbit who tried to get close.
That's all for today. See you next time.
P.S. thanks to everyone who wished my wife safe travels back from NZ. Despite mayhem in NYC (TSA shortages, I.C.E. presence, airport-closing crash at LGA), she made it through JFK and back here to central NY without a hitch.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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151 comments:
Easy-Medium. Skipped reading the theme clues, but I needed the revealer to understand the gibberish. Nice "aha moment." Liked it a lot more than @Rex did.
* * * * _
Overwrites:
RAGged before RAGTAG for the 5D motley crew, fixed quickly by TONI Morrison at 21A.
Considered moI for the Miss Piggy cry at 54A, but remembered the clue at 26D.
No real WOEs. I didn't know that MARK WAHLBERG (50A) was in The Departed, but I didn't see the clue until post-solve.
I couldn't care less about the idiotic vulgarity some people assign to simply holding up a finger, and I quite like the theme... but I elicodated the E issue to my wife last night and said, "It's hideous."
Surprised to see another Freddy Kreuger clue two days in a row
EINK? EBATES? Give me a E-Break
Miss Piggy ALWAYS said "Moi"
I have no idea why OUI is a cry from Miss Piggy.
In 2025, I submitted a puzzle with basically this theme. I even had Poltergeist/EGRET as one of the themers and FLIP THE BIRD as the revealer.
Mine was rejected as being too similar to a puzzle that ran in 2018 (July 25). Apparently seven years is 'too soon', but eight years is OK.
Too many celebs today.
Stellar outing today - slightly on the easy side late week but a well formed theme with a real banger of a reveal. Agree with the big guy that there is some unfortunate fill - E INK especially but overall it was clean.
The New Style
Can’t think of a more deserving center spanner than that good boy GOLDEN RETRIEVER. POLTERGEIST is top notch - WAHLBERG and ARCHES come in a little flat. No idea how anyone could have an issue with the revealer.
Sweet Head
Rex highlights the clunky fill - I liked YO HO HO, YOKEL, SMARTS, RAG TAG, KEENLY - a lot of real nice stuff to balance the E crowd. No idea on RENEE.
Buzzcocks
I’M IN all the way on this one - enjoyable Thursday morning solve. Bombers are off and running.
MESH
I liked this more than Rex did, but it was way easy for a Thursday. At first (going through the acrosses as is my routine) I just typed in POLTERGEIST and GOLDENRETRIEVER as they should be spelled. Then when I got to the revealer and tried to make sense of the shaded letters, I saw that they were bird names backward. So I thought that was the trick. Flip the bird names (in your head) to see them. It seemed fine but too easy. Then I started on the downs - of course a bunch of them didn’t work, so I figured out that you had to FLIPTHEBIRD first, making gibberish of the revealers. I liked my first take on it better and also didn’t think we needed the shaded boxes.
My only other hiccups were Miss Piggy’s phrases, what she iconically says is “moi?”, not OUI and since I didn’t have OUI in there, couldn’t make sense of mINK for a pig sound.
The E- words are all heinous.
Hey All !
Took a minute for the ole brain to gyrate enough to see how to enter the Themers. Actually got the Revealer first, ergo figured out the shaded squares were BIRDS that needed to be FLIPped. Chuckled at Rex's feeling of the puz telling him "f you".
Never noticed EINK. Holy moly, talk about made up words. Had I sent this in, that'd be one of the reasons for non-acceptance. "Too many non words, like EINK" would've been part of the reply. " While the flipped birds concept was nice, the Revealer phrase comes off as rude, and the Theme just didn't grab us well enough for publication" would've been the other explanation. (Sound familiar to everyone who's gotten rejection EMAILs?)
Anyway, didn't hate this. Neat idea, but loses something in execution. Maybe could've had some animation once completed, FLIPping THE BIRDs back and forth (with a subtle middle finger? Har)
Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Yeah, 'eink" is terrible, and miss piggy saying "oui"--obscure
Miss Piggy is known more for saying “Moi”. Ok Moi is in a clue and the downs made “oui” obvious but still.
The Merlin app is delightful, the Sound ID feature in particular. Sometimes I just let it run and watch the birds accumulate.
I enjoyed this puzzle. First, I'm going to defend EINK. It's a real word and an amazing technology. Sometimes (especially when traveling) the convenience of an e-reader (also a word ) is welcome, but reading a light emitting screen for long periods is unpleasant. EINK solves that problem, and I was quite excited when it arrived. The way it works (microscopic half-silverwed spheres with an.electrostatic dipole) is quite cool. It's a thing. Accept it
Also a thing: unpleasant things. We have language to describe those things. That's OK. At least for me.
Figured out the trick, got all the theme entries (needed a look-up for MARKWAHLBERG), but still couldn't put all the letters in the right places. FLIPTHEBIRD should mean 180 degrees, but unless I'm going blind in old age that isn't what's called for in each case.
I think the Miss Piggy OUI might be a (terrible) reference to what "this little piggy" says all the way home in the little kid toe rhyme
Got the themer early so that got rid of the gibberish problem. Enjoyed solving. Yes, the many E-words were annoying but the greatest offense was ASEASY. Found the puzzle fun.
I’m glad Rex unpacked the Trojan horse. I had the same thought: Greeks inside, not Spartans, but glad to know that it is technically not incorrect, given that Spartans comprised some of the Greek army.
I don’t know, but “YEA” sounds pretty informal to me, and EINK sounds, well really, really stupid.
Today we have another “decipher the gibberish” grid, here to dutifully secure Thursday as my least favorite day of the week (even though I did discern the theme, it still wasn’t any fun - it was just parsing together cross after cross in the hope that something coherent would eventually emerge - in one case, the name of an actor, oh what good fun that is). Anyway, I’m guessing many Thursday-lovers will enjoy this one even though it is not for me.
I wonder how CDilly’s granddaughter will react to this reveal - maybe she’s past that age of, I don’t know, enlightenment? I know that some of the words and phrases that my granddaughter came up with at a relatively young age certainly surprised me, but that is most likely my own (antiquated) gender bias showing through.
I felt very clever dropping in ACHAIANS, and not so thrilled when it turned out to be SPARTANS.
As much as I despise EBATE, I will go to bat for EINK, which is an actual technology and not made-up gibberish. (Although I believe it is hyphenated.)
Well, engage the bird button in my wake-up head, and you’ve turned neutral into favorable. Span a dog across the center, especially the make-the-heart-smile GOLDEN RETRIEVER, and you’ve turned favorable into auspicious.
Then keep it there with the lovely RAGTAG and BOOP, not to mention that In the three two-word theme answers, the bird connects the two words, rather than residing in one and leaving the other uninvolved.
And how can you not like a puzzle that includes both OINK and EINK, plus a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (LEPER)?
Things like this turn the box into a gift.
I found coming up with additional theme answers tough, with the exception of one very theme-friendly bird that shows up in a large number of phrases in the REAL WORLD, from STEEL WOOL to IMMORTAL WORDS.
This was fun to uncover, with enough stickiness to satisfy my brain’s workout ethic, and sent me into my day ready to conquer it. Thank you, Alex!
EINK followed immediately by ECIG? I turned to my partner and said, "Ooh, Rex is gonna be unhappy about this!"
Raised middle finger from the puzzle; two thumbs up from me. Once I understood the theme, I used it with a few crosses to fill in the shaded squares, which I needed to help me finish some of the obscure fill.
Just awful EINK especially
I thought this was a cute, 21st century puzzle. My big problem was that the top three birds are marine and the last, not.
I enjoyed it - but got suck upper RH as I had HO HO HO and could t figure out “formal agreement”. YEA is most decidedly not a formal agreement. In my opinion it might formally signal a vote in the affirmative, but that is not the same.
Of course I put in POLTERGEIST right away, leading to a big struggle with crosses to fix it. And then it didn't make sense. I eventually saw that you had to make some letters go backward, but that still didn't make sense. So I really needed the revealer, after which I thought the theme was pretty good. Same problems with the fill as everyone else -- though I was glad to learn that E-INK is a real thing (unlike EBATES, or at least I hope so).
But a solar revolution is not one year--that a revolution of earth around the sun. A revolution of the sun is much, much less than that.
I'm with Rex completely on SPARTANS, it's an awful clue. I got it entirely from crosses, and still didn't want to accept it.
Until today, I thought that the Nook reader had been discontinued long ago. I'm glad to learn that is not the case!
I’m just thankful there was no grid art.
I like your interpretation.
@Lewis. Your OWL samples are off: the birds (in the puzzle) are not written backwards. They're only to be read backwards to make sense of the word in which they're embedded (embirded?).
I made the same mistake in coming up with these three:
Who populates the WNBA: TAL[LWO]MEN
Hot-dog-themed amusement park: WIE[NERW]ORLD
State of being tired of gawking at women at the shore: BIKI[NIBOR]EDOM
For me the one positive was the yohoho clue. That was fun.
I flip the bird to this puzzle.No 🎈for me.
IThis puzzle made me THNIBORSIDE. Not that I WANAWSTING anything harder. It actually had a certain INALAETLURE for me.
Funny that @Rex is working on his birding life list but not his cocktail life list. Mine has grown long with the aid of the Arthur app. Just last night I spotted a rare Death in the Gulf Stream (malty genever, lime juice, Angostura bitters).
Thanks for the big middle finger, Alex Murphy.
I got the "trick" of filling in the theme answers with POLEGRETIST but didn't see the bird part early on. I normally dislike the gibberish that results with this sort of puzzle but it was well worth it for the cleverness of the theme. The F-word for me was FUN! I chuckled when it all became clear.
Like some others, I wanted POTERGEIST right away, and some of it worked. Filled in the rest from crosses, did some other themers, saw that parts of the answers were backwards, but did I notice they were birds? No. Not until the revealer, and then more of a doh! moment than an aha! moment. Didn't have OFL's problem with SPARTANS, which was the first thing I thought of, probably because I don't know enough about it. Also was not as bothered by FLIPTHEBIRD, which I think of as a watered-down version of "give the finger".
Didn't know RENEE but the one I really didn't know was EINK. Have never used Nook as a reader, as my books come from the library, nor did I think it might be E-something. Best I could do was think that EIN was German and somehow EIN K referred to the K in Nook. Well, it's a poor day when you can't learn something.
Pretty good trick, AM. I would say that I Almost Missed it, except I totally missed it until the revealer. Thanks for a decent amount of fun.
Opening Day, calloo, callay. Happy New Year to all who celebrate. Also go Sox.
Maybe in the French version?
Played about Medium for me today. I had more fun figuring out the gimmick than Rex did. All in all it seemed to be standard Thursday shenanigans, meaning I was "untouched" by the "gibberish" look of the themers.
But I grant that Rex made some valid points. I think my brain went into override mode at some critical junctures so that I didn't ABHOR the puzzle. For one, I just treated "flip the bird" as a puzzle instruction and didn't follow through to actually visualizing someone giving me the finger. Most critically, while trying to figure out the Down entry that wound up being EINK, in mild bafflement, I suddenly flipped over to Across mode where the paramount goal now was to work out the ordering of the letters in GOLDE(TERN)RIEVER, and suddenly that section of the puzzle was done and I put it out of my mind. Moving on! But yes, EINK is an eyesore for sure, and had I put that together with the other E-words, I might have reacted more as Rex did.
True, a lot of three-letter fill of a not especially distinguished sort. You might say it was ECONOMY class fill. Just to get you from point A to point B.
I do not like what I know of Mark Wahlberg, but I think I might come to like anyone whose name is MAR HAWKLBERG. Or at least get to know his backstory.
"The clue doesn't exactly put you in regular-old earth time" -- well, then consider Martian YEARS instead. Those are 687 days long, for those who want to know. Oh, and a Martian day is 24 hours 39 minutes long. Who knew?
I'm pretty sure I've never said "fuck" in front of a class. (Rex, did you really use "fuck" as a verb in your class yesterday? Wow! Teaching math typically doesn't afford one with such opportunities.) I'm pretty sure I have said "shit", maybe once, sort of sotto voce and in a tone of mildly exasperated amusement, with the class being amused right along with me, but honestly, professors probably ought to be sparing in their use of swear words, in my old-fashioned opinion. Or, go big if you're going to do that -- make sure they make your point powerfully.
That'll be all for now. Temps in the upper sixties today! Spring is coming!
I asked a couple of the online AI sites about a “solar revolution”, and I think I made their (figurative) heads explode. One of them provided this beauty:
“A solar revolution is generally not a year. While it sounds similar to Earth's orbit, a "solar revolution" usually refers to the 11-year cycle of solar activity (magnetic field flipping/sunspots). A "solar return" is a yearly event in astrology, and the sun takes 226 million years to orbit the Milky Way galaxy.”
I believe I posted a comment yesterday about clues that try too hard. With all of the gazillions of ways available to clue YEARS, it still baffles me as to why Shortz continues to embrace this type of nonsense.
I don"t understand about LEPER. Backwards it's PEREL which I only see defined as a Yiddish girl's name. Thanks.
I don't get the hate for EINK. It's a real term for a real thing. If you haven't heard it before, you're free to think it's ugly. But it's totally fair and not at all made up.
kitshef, I make the assumption (on the basis of your RP Blog membership) that your puzzle had nowhere close to the junky fill, including barrage of E-everything, that this one did. So interesting info from a constructor and sympathy for your, to this non-constructor, being disrespected.
Did Miss Piggy ever, even one time, actually say OINK?
I did an internship with the actual E Ink company, so that one was probably unfairly easy for me. It's actually a really cool technology, and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in more places. So far, I've really only seen it in e-readers and for price tags at a couple stores (like Kohl's).
Liveprof, 👍👍👍 for your three, far superior, choices for how to execute this puzzle. Though Gary might quibble that BIKINI BOREDOM isn't a thing 😂.
Oops. Never mind…LEPER—>REPEL I must be dyslexic this morning.
Anon, we did the exact same thing. And at that point we had not yet seen EBATES (mercilessly crossing EMAIL ME). Thankfully EMO, ENOKI, ECONOMY, theme bird EGRET or EMINEM 🤣 don't fall into the same regrettable category.
LEPER backwards is REPEL, which is not what PEREL does -- she's gorgeous.
had hohoho instead of yohoho, so I switched all my birds around, that didn't fix it, and then had to scour to figure it out...then with all the birds backwards still didn't ping as correct (which I think should have counted!) so I was really in a pickle for a while! I love birds and the f word, so this puzzle didn't hit me wrong
I believe I am correct (based on my obsession with the RP Rating System) that ONE and a HALF stars ties for the lowest award in this era. So Rex FLIPped the puzzle THE BIRD, but did not ABHOR it sufficiently to GET really UGLY and (KAPOW!!) give it one star.
And while I get what the theme is doing, to me there's just something off when a finished puzzle displays something so visually unattractive as MARHAWKLBERG.
Beware the Merlin! Hiking Panama a few months back, we were hunting quetzals and our guide (not a birder) sez, 'this is what they sound like..' The app? Went bananas. 'There's a quetzal on your shoulder!' it read. 'Now it's on your head!'
Reckon'd the blog was riffing, but then we see 'off-putting' three times in a line (thesaurus, man!). So, "fuck" in lesson y'day, in front o' teenage (?) students, (or did you "ef-asterisk-uhck, class"), and today, making the game about yourself, it presented you with a fat middle finger, and you were wee offended. Reconciling the incongruity is like swimming in a sea of estrogen.
Sussed the buried word reversal at the first minute (spoon-fed by the shading), nearly besting Rip's best at curtains. And in clapping in the ta-da, I thought, 'letter inversion neatly summed.' Whether 'shag' the other week or 'flip the bird' today, there is no 'normalization' of baseness or vulgarity in the game to these eyes.
Agree re e-ink and other midget fare. But this episode's easy diversion with its lighthearted concluding pun - thumb up.
Anonymous - Backwards, LEPER is REPEL.
Ha ha, yes!
I needed the revealer to know what to do with those scrambled letters, and if I'd looked for it earlier I probably would have had a faster time. But I wasn't offended by the revealer, because I took it very literally, I guess, and didn't think about the other meaning. All in all I liked the puzzle much more than Rex did. I now understand that EINK is a real thing, but I sure did stare at that word for several seconds before deciding it should stand.
Easy and irritating AF. I've long found the E-anything fill that constructors find so irresistible irksome but I'm willing to put up with one if I have to. Two is fingernails-meet-blackboard and three is throw the puzzle in the trash territory. Especially when they are as strained and "no actual human ever says this" as these were. E-INK? Eeeeyuck.
On the topic of birds, i just witnessed a 'leucistic' american goldfinch in my feeder yesterday. Almost pure white. Can't recall ever seeing leucism or leucistic in a puzzle. That would be fun.
I thought it was brilliant. I live for the theme/reveal and don’t get bent out of shape over “bad fill” or “gibberish” resulting from a clever twist. (I do agree the E-answers are forced, but who cares?) By ignoring the creativity of this puzzle’s theme in favor of amplifying its minor faults, you are only cheating yourself. Go ahead and critique, but I for one will not get so mired in nitpicking as to entirely forget the beauty of what we’re all seeking in the first place.
I don’t understand the hate but this was possibly the easiest Thursday in a very long time.
Upon further reflection I did not enjoy the puzzle. Lol
Unless you're from Washington State and immediately think SeaHAWK! (Which I did.) 😆
I’m not so bothered by FLIPTHEBIRD in itself. But I think we can, and maybe must, do better. My only issue with the idiotic vulgarity of the bird, is that it’s mostly enjoyed by ten year olds who think they’re being oh so bad, or road ragers with the emotional regulation capacity of a ten year old. So we can probably leave it out of the NYT. With the wide ranging and beautiful varieties in English expression, I don’t think we’ve needed to reach to this level of cutesy naughtiness. Our culture, including at the highest levels of power, is so juvenile and crude. And if you point that out, you’re a humorless scold at best, and ready for more nasty mockery.
I literally thought to myself, if I were a person who submitted puzzles, this would rankle. It’s just pretty bad in so many ways. And too easy for a Thursday on top of that (if you knew the many many pop culture references).
I don't mind searching for typos in a puzzle that I enjoyed, but this wasn't
it :(
Maybe I should start skipping Thursdays from now on???
@Liveprof: Those are excellent!
I recently saw Billy Idol talking about his stage name's origin; IDLE is what he originally wanted, as a play on "Idle Billy"'--a moniker that one of his teachers had tagged him with. Finding that "Billy Idle" was already in use, he went with IDOL. Fair bit of luck, that.
I am a child of the Muppet Show generation and MOI is the only possible answer. Compounding the error, I confirmed it with Idol. It took a while to recover from that.
Me, too, for writing in POLTERGEIST (with a smile - such a great word) and then needing to change the middle five letters to make the Downs work. Only with the following CRANE did I look back and spy the EGRET. After that, I was expecting two more shorebirds, so the HAWK was a surprise. What I didn't notice was that the letters in the bird words weren't just randomly scrambled, so when I read the reveal clue, my first thought was, "Well, that doesn't exactly fit"....until I took another look - and there they were, all indeed precisely flipped. Wowza - nice job!
Easy-medium seems right I initially ignored the shaded squares and worked my way down to the reveal. I finished pretty quickly after that.
No WOEs.
Costly erasures - me too for moI, rea and IDle.
Fun puzzle with a great aha moment, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Here’s another vote in favor of e-ink. It’s an amazing technology that propelled its inventors (MIT professors and grads) into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The company name is, you guessed it, E-Ink Corporation.
I actually really enjoyed this. I chuckled to myself reading 50a as "Mark Hawklberg." meh
I think Rex is excessively prudish in today’s blog. I really enjoyed this puzzle and consider it one of my favorite Thursdays in quite a while. The revealer is perfect! I get that I’m a lot younger than Rex, having only recently turned 70, but I was not at all offended by this common, well-known phrase. I’m sure I’ve been the recipient of the gesture on many occasions (I can see you Rex). Anyway, in a themed NYTXW, when the revealer hits the nail on the head and assists in the solution of the puzzle, I give it high marks. Some of the fill wasn’t great, but, overall, a very good puzzle.
Good catch there @Liveprof 9:03. Kinda makes my post today look stupid!
Weirdly, in my print version the first 9 letters of Golden Retriever were shaded. Took me a while to ascertain that it was a typo.
I’m interpreting this French word, when spoken aloud, as having the sound that little piggies make all the way home…
As in reply to @Kitschef, above…
81 here today, but don’t be too envious…a big scary storm predicted early evening, then back to true spring temps!
Well, an osprey is sometimes called a sea hawk…:)
Another Thursday Jumble.
See my finger raised at you, NYT.
Bizarre that someone who cannot distinguish describing or naming FLIPTHEBIRD (not rude) from actually having the bird flipped at them (rude) is serving up "a plate full of vomit" for our breakfasts. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw vomit at me. As others have noted, some of the fill was weak but this was a fun puzzle. (While we're voting, SPARTAN clue bad, EINK a real thing that real people say.)
@SJ…I think you are thinking of “yeah.” A parliamentary voice vote is nay (or no) or yea (or aye)
Wowzers ... this ThursPuz had some 'tude:
* ABHOR
* LEPER
* PARIAH
* GETUGLY
* FLIPTHEBIRD
Not only did the puz flip some birds, it also used OUI/OINK to sorta flip a Piggy.
staff weeject pick: EMO. Near-flip of ONE.
honrable mention to ONE also becuz of its clue-exchange program with neighbor HALF.
M&A darn near flipped out on how many weeject stacks there were: NE, SW, mid-N and mid-S, mid-W and mid-E.
fave other thing: EINK & OINK.
Thanx, Mr. Murphy dude. Liked it almost as much as @kitshef's version.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
"Yeah" is informal.
"Yea" is formal (as in oral voting).
But I'll give you half a point, not only because I'm generous but also because there's an informal "yea" meaning "this/that" (as in "I caught a fish yea big").
1.5* puzzle is generous, Rex.
ReneÉ Rapp has the accent on the wrong e. Masc. : René :: Fem. : Renée, my wife's name, poseurs and philistines never get it right.
Miss Piggy loves to speak French. An even more apt answer would have been “Moi,” which she loves to say innocently when she is anything but.
Cranes are not shore birds
Beware the Merlin! Hiking Panama a few months back, we were hunting quetzals and our guide (not a birder) sez, 'this is what they sound like..' The app? Went bananas. 'There's a quetzal on your shoulder!' it read. 'Now it's on your head!'
Reckon'd the blog was riffing, but then we see 'off-putting' three times in a line (thesaurus, man!). So, "fuck" in lesson y'day, in front o' teenage (?) students (or did you "ef-asterisk-uhck, class"), and today, making the game about yourself, it presented you with a fat middle finger, and you were wee offended. Reconciling the incongruity is like swimming in a sea of estrogen.
Sussed the buried word reversal at the first minute (spoon-fed by the shading), nearly besting Rip's best at curtains. And in clapping in the ta-da, I thought, 'letter inversion neatly summed.' Whether 'shag' the other week or 'flip the bird' today, there is no 'normalization' of baseness or vulgarity in the game to these eyes.
Agree re e-ink and other midget fare. But this episode's easy diversion with its lighthearted concluding pun - thumb up.
I'm annoyed at myself for not being able to splatz Stephen FRY in with no hesitation. I have a book by him, "The Ode Less Traveled" which is a book on how to write poetry, with assigned exercises and everything. And Mr. Fry is quite amusing. I bought the book with the idea that it might help me to learn to read poetry. Or help me to write better song lyrics. Unfortunately, one too many exercises in writing lines in iambic pentameter meant I put the book down years ago and it sits on my shelf where I look at it with a certain amount of guilt and yearning, but it hasn't yet overcome my reluctance to restart it.
A bird ending in WK was obviously a HAWK but I still needed the crosses to come up with MARK WAHLBERG. My husband makes a big deal about Mark's forehead lines. Any other actor who uses their forehead similarly gets pegged with a reference to Mr. Wahlberg.
Yes, the E words were a bit much (E-INK was the hardest for me to figure out) but I didn't mind this puzzle. Thanks, Alex Murphy.
I too flip the bird at EINK, OUI, and i’ll throw in YEA since to me, the formal context is a “yes” vote that doesn’t always equal “agreement”
Miss Piggy was known to use a French word or phrase now and then because she was so…glamorous. and that’s what glamorous people do, I guess.
I will never not mix up Stephen FRY and Stephen REA. They were both in V for Vendetta, but I always have to see their pictures to remember which is which.
@jberg 8:42 am; the Earth "rotates" around its axis each day, but it "revolves" around the sun each year. The clue is a bit misleading in saying "solar revolutions" but it means "solar revolutions of the earth".
@Anon 9:29. "Not at all made up". Not really true. I think the developers of a microencapsulated electrophoretic display system decided, quite sensibly, invent something easier to remember so that they could more easily market and profit from their admittedly wonderful product. E-ink to the rescue. Not a pretty word but better, and more marketable, than the alternative.
Across Lite shows circles instead of shaded squares, and by my count 4 of the last 7 puzzles have had circles. (Saturday and Sunday were themeless). That is way too many; once or maybe occasionally twice a week should be the max. So if the theme really requires them it should be worth it. This was... only okay.
Seemed like a lotta names today; I knew most of them but not necessarily from the clue (eg 50 across). And the only typeover I remember was AVENUE before ARTERY.
Today I learned E-INK is a real thing! It sounds made up.
Electronic noki, electronic gret, and electronic minem!
Enjoyed this puzzle! I did have an “Oh, you again” moment with the return of the dreaded shaded squares… but the involved answers were whacky enough that they probably helped a bit. Started from the top and worked my way down, and so by the time I had finished the top half of the grid, I knew we were flipping birds! So that was a nice pre-revealer Aha moment. 10:17 for me, so easy for a Thursday, with the top half playing easier than the bottom. Haven’t read @REX yet, but guessing this’ll get 2 stars at most from him… he doesn’t like gibberish answers in the grid. (I see he only gave it 1.5... even my thoughts about Rex's ratings are too rosy!). Liked seeing PARIAH, ARCADE, ANTIC and ARTERY. But don’t we think they should have gone ahead with the full trio of those 3 letter squares? We clued FRY and LEE as PPP, why not “___ Garten, famous TV Cook” as the clue for 60 down??? Anyhoo…. Thanks, Alex, for a great AHA moment! : )
You are so right, of course...as I know, if from nothing else, from the sandhill crane pair that frequent our definitely non-shore neighborhood!
MOI crossing MINE really fouled me up in the SE corner there!
Y’all are correct, I missed that one. I probably would have gone with “yay big” for the fish, so the extra half point is generous - but I’m grateful for it anyway.
@Karl. Good catch. I hope you were holding your hands at least a few feet apart.
I can honestly say that I have no idea what you are talking about.
Hey, friends. Hope this comment isn't too late in the day to be seen by someone who can help. I'm the guy who pops on once in awhile but doesn't really comment because someone gave me a subscription to the Times puzzles some months ago and I'm still playing catch up; while I greatly enjoy the column and your comments, I'm usually seeing them some weeks later so I don't comment (though I'd love to) because I figure any comment likely won't be seen. But I popped on to today's just to ask a question I hope someone can help me with. Is it my imagination, or are these columns not regularly also available in the format for the phone. (There's probably some technical term for what I'm asking but I don't know what it is.) In other words, after I do a puzzle, I simply search for that puzzle with Rex's name by date. It used to be that they were almost always available in a format that I could read on the phone easily -- white background, single column, easy to read, no moving the screen around to read a whole sentence. But it seems more and more I can't find that and I have to go to the web version -- seemingly more than half the time lately. I print out the puzzles but then I read the reviews on my phone. This column has been a real regular and fun part of my day. (This has been all the more true lately after hitting a difficult health crisis for the first time in my life.) But these old tired eyes do find it more difficult to read the web version. So, sorry to go on so long but, am I just doing something wrong and not seeing someplace where I can get the phone version of these columns -- or are they just not being made available for the phone regularly anymore? Thanks in advance.
The pronoun "one" used in the clue means anyone, so one of the people in the horse may or may not (more likely) be a Spartan. So this clue is pretty bad, not as bad as some of the answers though. Puzzle was bad and annoying, trying to keep track of where the reverse starts especially as the grey highlights disappears as the answer is beingmentered. Rex's write-upis spot on
Okanagan, I assume that is what the clue is implying but maybe it was implying "of Mars" or a billion other possibilities. But if so, say so. To me sloppy clue writing.
Mi máxima ambición es vivir una vida sencilla con la rana que amo.
Sheesk. I would not have guessed the IRE for this one. SLEEKEN, yeah, but birds? Even dirty birds? Seemed plenty SMARTS-ish to me. The Miss Piggy corner is a catastrophe, but it is about a muppet, so a little challenging to work up indignation. I also am of the opinion the NYTXW team is still blown away by a world where things are E-Whatever. They seem to love their E-things almost as much as LSD ... ELM and ETTA not withstanding:
E-NOKI
E-CONOMY
E-MAIL
E-MINEM
E-MO
E-INK
E-CIG
E-BATES
Nicely auditory beginning with a rumbling ghost, meditative sounds, a bop on the nose, and a punch in the kisser.
I think the CRANES were short changed with the word they're hiding in, and the clue isn't fun either. McDonald's after the apocalypse, maybe.
I got yelled at a week or two back over a very narrow Jonathan Swift definition of YAHOO, so imagine my enthusiasm for seeing YOKEL and hoping to heck it was coined by Swift's brother-in-law Sylvester. Turns out it wasn't. And Swift didn't have a brother-in-law named Sylvester. Apparently he only had a gal pal named Esther.
Like 🦖, I was flummoxed not to discover plain ole Greeks cruising around in the Trojan horse. More importantly, wouldn't it be cool to be inside of a horse big enough to hold multiple peeps? And then jumping out ... rawr! Or, OINK if Miss Piggy is a Spartan (but I seriously don't remember her ever saying OINK).
I prefer Mötley Crüe to a motley crew. And I really prefer not using a word like squib in a meaningless context like "Social media BIO." It's not a squib, is it? Maybe if it's a funny BIO?
❤️ KAPOW. GET UGLY. BOOP. YOHOHO.
😩 She-bear.
People: 10 {one too many}
Places: 2
Products: 6
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 23 of 78 (29%)
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Uniclues:
1 What the cult of orange voted for.
2 Ice cream and pizza for breakfast, fruit pie and whiskey for lunch, a sensible dinner if you're not blacked out.
3 One who pokes sad people on the nose for fun.
4 When you want to rap and be stabbed at the same time.
1 GET UGLY ECONOMY
2 "I'M IN" DIET
3 BOOP EMO PARIAH
4 EMINEM ELM URGE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: What gives me a headache. HAVING THOUGHTS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Carola-
I regretted my comment the minute I sent it. Forgive me.
I was, as usual, het up that a comment of mine was not published.
(It was just wishing Rex on his life list, and giving him tips on how to expand it—relatively- easily.
Unrelated to my boorishness and tge puzzle—- have you ever seen a movie called The Florida Project?
No plot really, just a quasi documentary about the poor folk on the unwelcome fringe of “The Happiest Place on Earth”.
Ive read your comments long enough to know it’ll make you cry.
I mention it all, because theres a very brief moment when Willem Defoe (who won an Oscar nom) has a gentle moment with a grouo of sandhill cranes. I can assure you, tgat scene was genuine. Not in the script. Just a captured moment as its called these days
@David in Sandy Eggo 2:35 PM
What I do when I'm on my phone, which is all of the time, and I need to find an old puzzle commentary, I switch to the web version, and then go to the date I'm looking for, and then scroll all the way to the bottom and switch back to the mobile version. I think that will get you what you're looking for.
It’s ok SJ. I mean…yea, yeah, ya, yay, etc. It’s easy to get them all hobgobbled!
Me three! :D
SJ…(and I’m just kidding)…stay off the AI sites! Did you NOT see Terminator or realize the whole “singularity” thing? (Plus…they aren’t YET reliable…thank goodness)
I liked it too!
Dash Riprock again emerges with stories I don’t understand. Dash. I figure you are as leat old as me given the reference to The Beverly Hillbillies. I think you can do a persona that people actually understand and appreciate.
@tht 9:23 AM
93° yesterday. Hottest winter ever in the southwest. 😩
For me, I just use the Google bar on the phone, type in "nyt crossword", and the "Rex Parker does the NYT crossword" link pops up (along with some others.) I hit it, it takes me to what I believe is the phone version you're looking for. It doesn't take me to the Rex homepage (the yellowy colored thing.)
Or I am just wrong. Strong possibility of that. 😁
Roo
Sir. I shall conduct a search on that very important question. Okay, I won’t but I love your post!
@Liveprof 9:03 AM
BIKI[NIBOR]EDOM is NOT a thing.
I think the whole EINK “controversy” just stemmed from too many “e-blanks” in puzzle. Um…it was a new one, and it just seemed a bit much with “bates” and “cigs.” I applaud E Ink. With that said, I usually read paper books or listen to audiobooks, but EINK has its place!
Wow, I think the revealer is funny and clever!
Oh c’mon…lol…we ALL come back. My Magic Eight Ball says that “without a doubt” you will solve a Thursday that pleases you…:D
Are you back home? “Enquiring” minds want to know!
Really????….a wee bit lame!
I always thought that tricks you do to words in a crossword are so supposed to result in real words, not gibberish like MARHAWKLBERG.
Spot on. Some people cannot (refuse) to see the forest from the trees.
I believe that @dash rip rock is a speechwriter for Trump.
a generous interpretation. You are being very kind. But I'm not sure anyone ever thought of Miss Piggy as a "little piggy."
Happy birthday
Did anyone mention that this SPARTAN association with the Trojan Horse comes from the marketing of Trojan condoms, which has used a SPARTAN warrior's head for its logo for about a century. Product marketing trumping history. And just one more reason (among so many already mentioned) why this puzzle is an embarrassment.
I solved the puzzle by entering the bird name flipped so that the across words made sense and the down words only made sense after unflipping the bird name. Took me quite a while to figure out that the "correct" answer was the opposite of what I was doing on my iPad.
@Anon 3:15 pm, well I've seen a lot sloppier clues than that... it's just trying to be a little bit tricky is all. And the difference between rotation and revolution is not that well known by non science folks. (At least they used the right one!)
The constructor seems to think that the SPARTAN logo for Trojan condoms is historically valid. Has the puzzle really sunk this low?
Les SA. More: ALL words are made up. This one has been in the language since ebooks were introduced two decades ago; it refers to a specific technology. At what point are words that are made up (every single word in the English language, btw) not legitimate in your mind? Arbitrarily when you were born and you determined that language was "fixed" in stone? Nonsense.
E-ink is the display technology used by e-reader devices like Kindles and Nooks.
Point well taken!
Remember the Car Talk guys? Their Staff Swimsuit Designer was C. Bigbe Hinds.
Another vote for eink as a decent answer, it’s a unique technology!
“from the trees” 🤔
Incoherent bruh
@Beezer: believe me, I'm not envious!
@Gary: that does seem to be the general trend. Here in the northeast, this past winter felt colder than the previous two, so the temps today came as some local relief. But yeah, I know what you mean.
Well I liked this one just fine. I understand all of @Rex's points, they just don't bother me as much.
The NW fell very quickly for me so I was able to see that the first themer at 17A *had* to be poltergeist but the downs said "no!" It was also obvious to me that goldenretriever had to be the spanner themer but again, the downs told me otherwise so I knew something was up.
After (like @Rex) I corrected Rea to FRY at 58D, I had enough to knock down FLIPTHEBIRD. I for one had a lot of fun going back to the themers and figuring it all out. I wasn't particularly offended by the revealer and I thought the theme was kinda neat.
I'll concede that some of the fill and the whole lotta "E" stuff did GETUGLY, but ugly doesn't bother me too much in crossword world, as long as I'm having a good time with the solve (which is admittedly 99% of the time for me so maybe my bar is low.)
Today I learned about EINK, which I thought just had to be wrong, but knowing what it is now, I loved the cluing there.
Maybe a tad easy for a Thursday but I got a lot of joy out of this one. Thanks, Alex! I had fun.
@Rex - so glad you're wife is home safe and sound. Also - you mentioned the tallest building on campus - what is that now? I'm trying to remember what it was in the '80s...
Kitshef
My reaction to your comment.
Ouch!
With an identical word even.
Anonymous 5:14 PM
“Puzzled” by your comment. I don’t see any reference whatsoever to condoms in the puzzle
I assume are talking about Greek Myths here, not history, but Rex has already mentioned Menelaus , according to said myths, a Spartan King in the Trojan Horse.
As Rex himself said, the answer is therefore technically correct. In my opinion, technically correct is simply correct in crosswords.
Not sure I’ve ever disagreed more strongly with Rex about a puzzle. I thought this was fun. Only e-cig was particularly offensive as a solution.
Anonymous, I appreciate your writing back and forgive you, of course. I saw The Florida Project when it came out, and it has stayed with me. A quiet movie that packs a wallop. Thank you for reminding me of the crane moment - yes, a gentle moment reflective of that wonderful character.
Thanks for repeating. Taking aside the “sea of estrogen”….maybe just write something out of the “character” or whatever it is. I usually lose interest in your spiel after first two sentences, but since you repeated it, I forced myself to finish it. I sound like a troll. I’m not. Get a new and real persona and put out your thoughts. You sound like you COULD be interesting.
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/25/2018
Thanks for mentioning the recycled theme. I didn't remember the 2018 puzzle (solved from the archive), which is odd because I loved the theme/revealer and things bird-related.
*2018 Spoilers*: PIA(NOREH)EARSAL, POL(TERGE)ISTS, GOLD(ENARC)HES, FLIP[PED]THEBIRD.
Constructed by Emily Carroll (credit where credit is due).
Loved the puzzle, until @kitshef pointed out that the theme has been done before. I don't mind an occasional rehash, but Feb 23 2026 (Mon) also had a recycled theme: ROLEREVERSAL(S).
https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2026/02/psychotherapy-switcheroos-mon-2-23-26.html
ROLEREVERSAL vs. ROLEREVERSALS. FLIPTHEBIRD vs. FLIPPEDTHEBIRD.
Today's puzzle added an extra themer, and I did enjoy the solve. Memorable puzzle (this time, for now). Thanks Alex Murphy.
@Liveprof -- Oh, great catch! You are absolutely right!
Re: your birding, I highly recommend you check out the documentary “Listers” on YouTube. Amazing.
@Anon 5:24. Ebooks have been around since the 1970s. E-ink is a product of the late 90s. Firstly, read what I wrote and then do some research.
the puzzle was a real life attempt to portray what we all feel its ok its NYC its NOT to cause harm its a puzzle and this puzzle is brilliant
Beware the Merlin! Hiking Panama a few months back, we were hunting quetzals and our guide (not a birder) sez, 'this is what they sound like..' The app? Went bananas. 'There's a quetzal on your shoulder!' it read. 'Now it's on your head!'
Reckon'd the blog was riffing, but then we see 'off-putting' three times in a line (thesaurus, man!). So, "fuck" in lesson y'day, in front o' teenage (?) students (or did you "ef-asterisk-uhck, class"), and today, making the game about yourself, it presented you with a fat middle finger, and you were wee offended. Reconciling the incongruity is like swimming in a sea of estrogen.
Sussed the buried word reversal at the first minute (spoon-fed by the shading), nearly besting Rip's best at curtains. And in clapping in the ta-da, I thought, 'letter inversion neatly summed.' Whether 'shag' the other week or 'flip the bird' today, there is no 'normalization' of baseness or vulgarity in the game to these eyes.
Agree re e-ink and other midget fare. But this episode's easy diversion with its lighthearted concluding pun - thumb up.
ACHAEANS makes a lot more sense than SPARTANS.
Generally the option to see desktop vs mobile versions of a site is in your browser. If you are on a site but seeing the desktop version when you want the version for your phone, check the settings on your phone browser.
Couldn’t be farther from Rex on this. I loved it.
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