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Metal-shaping tool / SUN 3-1-26 / Philippine seaport with a repetitive name / Sources of fur in some luxury clothing / Old coin worth 1/20 of a pound / It's all there in black and white / Pertaining to conflict, in behavioral science / Dark half of a famous duality / Constellation shaped like a harp / TV giant with a Deportes channel
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Constructor: Matt Proulx and Jeffrey Martinovic
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- CHINC🟢HILLAS (16A: Sources of fur in some luxury clothing)
- CAPTAIN P🟦HILLIPS (44A: 2013 film whose titular character is captured by Somali pirates)
- BRITISH S♦HILLING (78A: Old coin worth 1/20 of a pound)
- BONE-C♦♦HILLING (105A: Eerie and then some)
Swaging (/ˈsweɪdʒɪŋ/) is a forging process in which the dimensions of an item are altered using dies into which the item is forced. Swaging is usually a cold working process, but also may be hot worked.
The term swage may apply to the process (verb) or to a die or tool (noun) used in that process.
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| ["Eccentric Swage Nipple" is my favorite '60s psychedelic rock band] |
The term "swage" comes from the Old French term souage, meaning "decorative groove" or "ornamental moulding". Swages were originally tools used by blacksmiths to form metal into various shapes too intricate to make with a hammer alone. These have handles for holding or pegs for attaching to an anvil, and often a flat head for striking with a hammer. Swage blocks are anvil-like dies with various shapes forged into them, which are also used for forming metal. Swages called "fullers" are specific to making grooves in swords and knives. (wikipedia)
• • •
[66D: "Fernando" group, 1976]
The hardest part for me today was the CLAMBER / SHARE A CAB / KEVIN JONAS stack. LO-extreme-L at the idea that I would know any of the first names of the Jonas brothers. Nick? Is one of them named Nick? Yes. How do I know that? I think maybe I also have heard of Joe Jonas. But KEVIN, oof, no. SHARE A CAB makes me want to EAT A SANDWICH ... although I suppose it's got a bit more standalone power than EAT A SANDWICH (18A: Carpool home from the bar, say). Still, I don't think of sharing a cab as "carpooling." And as for CLAMBER ... I kinda sorta wanted it, but I didn't trust myself there (9A: Move awkwardly (up)). Not a word I ever use. The more I look at it, the wronger it looks. Anyway, CLAMB over SHARE A over KEVIN was giving me issues for a bit, esp. since that whole stack was traversed by CHESS, which was very toughly clued (9D: It's all there in black and white). "There?" Where? Also, not all chess sets feature black and white men. In fact, if you do an image search (right now, go ahead) you'll find that very few of the results are black & white. There's always some form of dark and light, but the "white" pieces are often more of a light brown, made out of a light wood. Something like this:
The clue is still fair, just hard. Not much else about this puzzle was hard. Except SWAGE. LOL, SWAGE, what the hell? (102D: Metal-shaping tool). I needed every cross. Then I had to check and double-check every cross to make sure that I didn't have an error. Then I just stared at it for a second like "really?" Then I just left it there and hoped for the best. Seventeen years since the last appearance of SWAGE. That means I've seen it. I've even blogged about it. I wonder what I said about it in 2009, hang on ... ha, SWAGE didn't even make Word of the Day. The Word of the Day that day was WOLD ... whoa, WOLD and SWAGE crossed at the "W"! Yikes. Nothing so frightening in today's grid.
Made a few small mistakes here and there. CIA AGENT before CIA ASSET (3D: Mole, maybe). STEEL TOE before STEEL TIP (86D: Sturdy boot feature). ARIzona before ARKansas (does anyone abbr. "Arkansas" that way??) (6A: State home to the only public diamond mine in the U.S.: Abbr.). Unusual stuff like POULT (70D: Young turkey) and ILOILO (53A: Philippine seaport with a repetitive name) I know from years and years of solving. Historically, the constructor who used ILOILO the most (by far) was Eugene Maleska (who is best known as the editor who preceded Will Shortz). As a constructor (before he became editor), he used ILOILO six (6!) times, which is almost as many times as ILOILO appeared in all the puzzles he edited (7). My point is, if you didn't know ILOILO, don't feel too bad. It was way more common in days of yore. We haven't seen it for about six years. It's been a little over four for POULT, which disappeared for over twelve years there in the early part of this century, but generally appears once every handful of years. Uncommon, for sure. But worth knowing. Bound to come back ... some day.
Bullets:
- 30A: Like Buffalo, N.Y., about 167 days a year, typically (RAINY) — almost half the year? Really? I live only a handful of hours away from Buffalo, and I had no idea. We don't get nearly that much rain here. We do get ~150 days with precipitation, but much of that is snow. I knew about Buffalo's lake effect snow. The snowiness of Buffalo is legendary. Infamous. The rain, wow, real news to me. In fact, I'm not sure the clue is right. It's at least misleading. I'm looking at data that says Buffalo gets 166 days of precipitation, annually. That's rain or snow, not just rain. I submit to you that snowy days are not RAINY.
- 121A: Pertaining to conflict, in behavioral science (AGONISTIC) — I know this word from studying Greek literature. Agon is a Gr. deity who personified conflict, but it's also a term meaning "contest" or "struggle" (that's how I know it, anyway). Here's some good background information from our good friends at merriam-webster dot com:
Agonistic has its roots in ancient Greece—specifically in the agonistic (to use the oldest sense of the word) athletic contests called agons featured at public festivals. From physical conflict to verbal jousting, agonistic came to be used as a synonym for argumentative and later to mean "striving for effect" or "strained." Common current use, however, is biological, relating to confrontational interaction among animals of the same species and the responsive behaviors—such as aggression, flight, or submission—they exhibit. Agonistic is also sometimes used to describe an agonist muscle, a muscle that on contracting is automatically checked and controlled by an opposing muscle, that other muscle being an antagonist. For example, during a bicep curl in weight lifting, the (contracted) bicep is the agonistic muscle and the (relaxed) triceps muscle is the antagonist.
- 69D: Dark half of a famous duality (YIN) — so ... not TOM?
- 18D: Music that's a little offbeat? (SKA) — "Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat." (wikipedia)
- 44D: Bumpy ride? (CAMEL) — embarrassed by how long this took me. It's a very good "?" clue and I just blanked and blanked and blanked and even blanked some more after I'd gotten it down to CAME-. "CAMEO?" No, not CAMEO, dummy.
P.S. if you live in southern Michigan (as I used to) or anywhere near there, really, then guess what? You've got a regional crossword tournament coming up. Detroit! (well, Hamtramck, which is close). It's called the Grid Prix and it takes Thursday, Mar. 19 at Book Suey in Hamtramck, MI. Capacity is limited. I know I have a lot of Ann Arbor readers, specifically, so some of y'all should go check it out! Send me pictures. I miss Michigan. Go Tigers. Go Blue. Here's the info:
P.P.P.S. if you're looking for (yet another!) fun little word game to play on your phone, you might try Oroboro, where overlapping words form a circle and you use the clues to complete it. You can set the difficulty level to your liking. Check it out here.
P.P.P.P.S. if you want a cute word-related gift book, or maybe a book of wordplay you can share with your kids, check out AB@C ("a bee at sea") a new book of gramograms ("puzzles in which letters, numbers, and other symbols are spoken aloud to make words and sentences"). These puzzles were made famous by the great William Steig (I own both his CDB! and CDC?), and now author Rob Meyerson and New Yorker cartoonist Dan Misdea have teamed up for a new, modern collection. Pick it up at bookshop.com or wherever you buy books. You can pick up Steig's books while you're at it!
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23 comments:
Easy. Not much there there for a non-skier, and I don't like it when they try to increase the difficulty via obscurity (see WOEs).
Overwrites:
Like OFL, I thought it might be ARi(zona) with the 6A diamond mine, not ARK
Crossword staple Loo before crossword staple LAV at 10D
As soon as I'm done typing this I'll have to turn in my Pop Culture Maven card. I had KEVIN JONAh instead of JONAS at 22A.
WOEs:
Philippine city Iloilo at 53A
POULT (young turkey) at 70D. I guess it makes sense because of POULTry.
Didn't know composer HANS Zimmer (80A), but got it easily from crosses
The CONN Smythe hockey trophy at 85D
Singer ELLIE Goulding at 104D
Jurassic Park's Sam NEILL at 113A. I saw the movie 30+ years ago.
AGONISTIC at 121A
Metal tool SWAGE at 102D
Never heard of the skiing rating system but I really can’t stand seeing references to the sport, puts me in a foul mood. Thought SMURF was a video game verb, not some sort of cartoon. Otherwise thought it was fair. Liked PET SCANS, reminded me of my border collie Max ;))
Once again the NYT offers cutesy graphics and poor cluing. GOING DOWN FAST appropriately describes the quality of NYT puzzles since the big changes of a couple of years ago. There are certainly other sources of better (and free) puzzles.
Unpopular opinion maybe; those symbols mean nothing to kids that didn't grow up affording a trip to ski. I only got it by hill and mid across. Were the symbols even necessary? Hill descending was enough for me!
Those like me who solve and/or create puzzles on crosshare.org should be familiar with the circle-square-diamond-double diamond system.
I took a weird path through the grid, moving straight down to the double diamond HILL once I got the one up top. That made it easy to see PHILLY and confirmed that all the sets of circles had HILL. I moved back to the top after figuring out BONEC(HILL)ING.
SWAGE x WOLD is insane. That 2009 grid didn’t have STAGE or TOLD anywhere else and didn’t need the W for pangram shenanigans. That beast of a crossing was just there to make the grid a little more Saturdayish.
Extremely easy, number one. Number two, all these recent puzzles with circles would, I think, be more fun (and challenging) without them. In today's digital age, couldn't we select the degree of difficulty,? Three, I'm not a fan of hobby-themed puzzles. Did this puzzle need the flags? The last time I downhill skied was in the late 1960s on a very cold night at Greek Peak somewhere near Ithaca...I was in college... so that is the limit of my interest, the Olympics notwithstanding. I collect wristwatches and could imagine a puzzle called "Take Your Time" with themes being different escapements...Swiss, lever, co-axial, spring drive...but who else would enjoy that?
Given that Messrs. Hall and Oates are suing one another, ‘former’ might have been apt for that clue.
I only snow skied one time. I was 20. I was waiting for a lesson and had on beginner skies – metal, thick, huge. I was several yards away from the lip of a bunny hill, and the ground I was waiting on ever so slightly tilted toward that hill, and I started slowly gliding toward its lip. Not knowing how to stop, I just kept going, and the next thing I knew, I plunged down, keeping my balance.
The bottom was curved like the bottom of the letter U, and when I reached it, I kept going because, again, I didn’t know how to stop. I went up, then down (backwards!), and up and down, like the bottom of a pendulum, in ever decreasing arcs, like something out of a cartoon, until I finally stopped.
This was some time ago, and I don’t remember why I wasn’t immediately hooked on the sport, as the whoosh down that hill was quite thrilling. But my life moved elsewhere, and skiing never became part of it.
The memory of this experience, however, remains vivid as ever.
It’s an odd theme no doubt - to tie-in the slope of the circles to the colors/symbols of the ski trail system is inventive but doesn’t really supplement the experience. The revealer is a swing and miss.
Ray Peterson
The overall fill suffers from the theme build. Loaded with a TON of BLIPS and WOES. Tje highlight was CLAMBER. PET SCANS, FINGERNAILS, AIRPLANE etc take up a lot of real estate but bring nothing. Rex explains the awkwardness of FULL BEARD. My boots are always STEEL toe. LIPOS is perhaps the ugliest plural we’ve seen.
Peter CASE
Easy enough - but a chore.
Siouxsie
Legal dispute was settled in August
Well, this had to be a bear to construct, and props to the constructors for what they accomplished. When theme answers shoot off diagonally, even a little, as three-quarters of today’s do, it incredibly constricts the number of word possibilities that can go into the grid.
That may explain the three words I’ve ever come across before – SWAGE, POULT, and AGONISTIC. I found these to be marvelous – SWAGE and POULT both look and sound cool to me. AGONISTIC makes me smile because my brain refuses to see it as anything but "agnostic".
It may also explain CLAMBER and PURGE, words I know and love.
I got a kick out of being misdirected by [Pool implements] for CUE STICKS, which had me cataloging the various tools I used when I lived in a house with a swimming pool. I also loved OAST, an anagram of “oats”, touching corners with OATES.
A lovely theme concept buttressed by a staccato of sweet pings – a formula that had me smiling from alpha to omega. Thank you, Matt and Jeffrey!
RAINY has the sense of something continuous and steady and widespread. Not fine mists in the morning, a few sprinkles in the afternoon, a quick shower in the evening, "lake effect" flurries almost any time of day, or very localized participation alongside clear skies just a few blocks away - much of which in Buffalo is the result of condensation from the lakes that gets "dropped" when the cloud moves over land. I'd hardly call that RAINY weather. The clue is misleading (and not in a clever or good way).
Got through this about 10% faster than my average time, though it seemed much longer than normal...
"The hardest part for me today was the CLAMBER / SHARE A CAB / KEVIN JONAS stack." -- Yah, and that's because I had LOO for the British bathroom for the longest time, and was considering CHOSEACAB, which of course does not fit.
The ski trail levels were familiar to me, although when I skied (more than half a lifetime ago!), I stuck with easy trails. We have friends who ski black diamond trails.... Perhaps the hardest ski trails should've been at the top of the puzzle, with the greatest drops??
I would think TSKS (64D) would be expressions of *shaming*, not "expressions of shame."
Easy-peasy, breezy Sunday fun! Off to work now.
Brilliant feat of construction, not much fun to solve.
Not much of a skier myself, even though I live in Vermont, where we definitely know the difference between rain and snow.
The opposing sides in chess are always referred to as black and white, I believe, even if the specific set colors are turquoise and tangerine.
Stravinsky wrote a pretty cool late ballet called AGON.
Also, in a losing battle fought with with the public all through their time working together, they rejected the term "Hall and Oates," insisting that they were not some single entity joined at the hip, but were distinct partners, Daryl Hall and John Oates, and wanted to be known as such.
As soon as I got RD, I knew the Gandlalf answer woild be FULLBEARD, so I reject Rex's assertions that it's not a thing, at least for Gandalf (and I'm not an "LotR" fan at all).
I also wasn't a big fan of this puzzle. Extremely easy, and I didn't even know why the symbols were there until Rex's writeup.
Hey All !
Took a bit to see the trick. Wondered how to implement the shapes into the answers, turns out they are just substitutes for the Blockers. A visual representation of the easiness of the HILLS, apparently. What tipped me off was having PHILLIPS in the grid, without any of the Downs working. Once I had enough letters in that Themer, saw it to be CAPTAINP, and then saw the circled HILL, which was already filled, followed by the IPS of BLIPS, and got my AHA. Tried making sense of CAPTAIN P(BLUESQUARE)HAUNT for a bit!
Nice idea. Good fill, considering all the rigamarole the constructors had to navigate through. Self inflicted, sure, but puzs don't make themselves.
Liked BONECHILLING as a description of the Double -Diamond HILL. A straight drop like that would be BONE CHILLING, or BONE BREAKING.
Good SunPuz. Nice RexWriteup. He suggests some good books, I suggest mine! Changing Times, by Darrin Vail, grab it wherever you get your books online!
Have a great Sunday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Pretty good puzzle overall. Although, I had to run the alphabet on the AGONISTIC/SWAGE crossing.
Anyone else bothered by the fact that the rest of the squares following each theme answer were meaningless? The theme answers dropped down the HILL, but the rest of the across squares just hung there. I kept wanting those to make sense. Unless I missed something?!
🩷
I daresay that it was the introduction of turquoise and tangerine chess pieces that put civilization on the slippery slope from which it will never recover...
Solved it in the magazine. Got everything except the SWAGE/AGONISTIC cross, but an alphabet run online would have given me the "G." I had no idea about the difficulty rating system, but caught the theme, anyway, because CHINCHILLA and BRITISHSHILLING were obvious. Impressive feat of construction, for sure.
Even though I don’t ski, I got the theme right away. I’m surprised that a lot of people didn’t like the puzzle. I enjoyed solving it.🎈🎈🎊🎊
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