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Cliff formed by a fault / THU 5-14-26 / Ruthless Athenian lawgiver / Prolifically posting about one's kids online, in a neologism / Member of a sluglike "Star Wars" species / September to April, in the oyster industry / Penultimate Greek letter / Biblical locale guarded by a flaming sword / Trellis piece / Alternatives to hourly wages / Former small-sized G.M. cars / Heather genus that's also a woman's name / Ancient book of divination
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Constructor: Simeon Seigel
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
 |
| [45D: Member of a sluglike "Star Wars" species] |
Theme answers:
- STANDING [WATER] / [WATER]MARK (19A: Prime breeding environment for mosquitoes / 20A: Impression on some fancy sheets)
- ON THE [WATER] / [WATER] CANNONS (24A: At sea, say / 27A: Powerful fireboat gear)
- RETAINS [WATER] / [WATER] WINGS (43A: Gets bloated, say / 45A: Pair for a pool)
- RAIN[WATER] / [WATER] PITCHERS (48A: What collects in a puddle / 49A: Things often getting free refills)
The kithara (Greek: κιθάρα, romanized: kithára), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching music to beginners. As opposed to the simpler lyre, the cithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. In modern Greek, the word kithara has come to mean "guitar"; etymologically, the word guitar derives from kithara. (wikipedia)
• • •
I've seen H2O puzzles before. This one is interesting / original because of the way the molecules bridge two different "WATER" answers. Again, I really wish there were some rationale for this bridging that could be expressed in revealer form. It would make the whole theme make much more sense. As is, H-O-H just seems like an architectural flourish. Who cares? Worse, you get a lot of actually fairly dull WATER answers. Like ... that's a lot of WATER, and hardly any of the answers are taking that WATER in an interesting direction. At least WATERMARK gets us out of a liquid form for a little bit. But otherwise, the WATER is just ordinary WATER. All wet. I will say, though, that the fill on this one is more interesting than usual, and lifts the puzzle somewhat out of boring territory. I mean, I don't *love* "R" MONTHS or PER DIEMS (plural), but at least they have a little flash, a little energy, a little sass. See also SHARENTING, a portmanteau that makes me cringe, but at least the puzzle's trying to keep things interesting (11D: Prolifically posting about one's kids online, in a neologism). And then it throws a KITHARA at me at the end, that was unexpected! I had the KI- and absolutely no idea what was happening. "Did ... did the KEYTAR give the guitar its name? I must have that backward." Indeed.
I do not eat oysters and know about the "R"-month thing only from crosswords—not because of the answer "'R' MONTHS" (4D: September to April, in the oyster industry) but because of "'R'-LESS" months! That's right, RLESS is a thing you used to see in crosswords to describe the months that oysters are out of season, when you're not supposed to eat them. Hmm, looks like RLESS is still alive and well and I've just mentally blocked that fact out. Ten appearances since I started blogging, though none for about five years now. I imagined RLESS as a relic of the Maleska days, but in fact RLESS has been used almost exclusively in the Shortz Era. The one pre-Shortz appearance (1989) actually clued RLESS as [Like speech in New England?]. Anyway, if you had no clue about the connection between "R"s and oysters, now you do.
Bullets:
- 25D: Had to have right away (NEEDED ASAP) — NEED ASAP would be a clunky and awkward answer, so NEEDED ASAP ... yeah, that's worse. The one clunker among the longer non-theme answers today. I keep reading it as NEEDED A SAP. [Yearned to con someone]?
- 1A: Cliff formed by a fault (SCARP) — I think I know the term "escarpment." But SCARP definitely gave me trouble today. I'm sure I've seen SCARP in crosswords before ... [checks database] ... yes, I have, a handful of times, but not for about five years. I got the "SCA" easily but the last two letters eluded me for a bit, in part because "ALL ME!" (not a thing people say) kept giving me "RM-" at the beginning of 4D: September to April, in the oyster industry, and that seemed impossible.
- 13A: "My fault entirely" ("ALL ME") — cannot imagine this as a standalone phrase. "That was ALL ME." "It's ALL ME." Maybe. But the standalone phrase is "MY BAD." "ALL ME" sounds more like you're bragging about an accomplishment than taking responsibility for a screw-up.
- 55A: Broadcasting giant with hundreds of stations (I HEART RADIO) — technically the whole thing is one word: "iHeartRadio." "iHeartRadio is owned by iHeartMedia, which was rebranded from Clear Channel in 2014" (wikipedia).
- 10D: A peeling that's appealing? (POTATO SKIN) — I mean ... if you like POTATO SKINs, I guess they're "appealing." Weird clue, though. "Appealing" doesn't really get at ... anything. I'm not sure the pun here is worth it.
- 3D: Palindrome on an Italian restaurant menu (ALLA) — crosswordese, and a gimme. I do not like this answer, but I do like that the puzzle decided to get a little inventive with the clue by linking it to the other culinary crosswordese palindrome in the puzzle, NAAN (39D: Palindrome on an Indian restaurant menu). Nice little echo there. Makes the crosswordese go down a little easier.
That's all for today. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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126 comments:
17:16 for me Wed night, so I’d call that medium for a Thursday… Saw the angles in the grid and KNEW it was water…. HOH. That worked with TITO Puente (one of my faves….), PITH and __NO and LATH and IMO…. But I couldn’t get it to work on the acrosses at all. I even briefly thought maybe the revealer (62A) might be esTER instead of water, cause…. But then I looked around some more and realized it was going to be “water”-MARK and “water”CANNONS and then I was off to the races. Liked “NEEDEDASAP” and POTATOSKIN and even learning SHARENTING. Thank you, Simeon, this was fun!!! And thanks for resetting our StarWars counter back to 0! : )
Cute theme - but as the big guy mentions the reveal is less than splashy. The construct is neat - although after STANDING WATER - WATER MARK we get free letters further on.
DUST of Daylight
Overall fill was late week tricky - I liked it. KITHARA, ICHING, TIME TRIALS all solid. SHARENTING is unfortunate and Rex covers NEEDED ASAP. Not sure modern oyster farmers adhere to the R MONTHS rule.
Third RATE Romance
This was an enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
I am SMITTEN
I'm the real thing
Super-Easy. Got the theme as soon as I saw the grid.
* * _ _ _
Two minor overwrites, Um NO before UH NO at 14D and tgi Friday before GAL at 57A.
One WOE, KITHARA at 42D.
The part that annoyed me was the NYT app. I was thinking Thursday = rebus and dutifully entered "WATER" into all the H circles, got no happy music and went looking for typos for however long. Nope, all they accepted was the H, so I lost time on the first entry and then on the trying to figure out where I was wrong and then on fixing them. And then after all that, there was not even a clever animation in which the molecules all turned into water splashing or something.
I had the water molecule pegged before a single entry. No resistance. Boring. Back into the archives so I can finish my morning coffee.
A per diem is NOT a daily pay rate, but rather an amount provided for living expenses. Not an alternative to hourly wages.
Tao is not a Confucian "way", Daoism and Confucianism are two separate philosophies.
RARELY have I hated a puzzle as much as this one. So many clues more appropriate for a (bad) Saturday, so many answers I hope I never have to type again.
Anyone else drop in OSSO for 3D?
Pretty easy, because of all the free letters from the theme, and this despite completely unknown to me IHEARTRADIO, and nearly unknown HUTT. I mean, I did know about Jabba the HUTT, but have no idea how I knew he was slug-like.
I get DRACO mixed up with Procrustes, the guy with the iron bed, so I searched the web for him--and could find only references to someone from the Harry Potter world. I had to search for "draconian" to find him.
I'm thinking NAAN ALLA vodka might be an interesting dish--and as a bonus, vodka is Russian for 'little water,' so it could go into a theme answer set with smaller circles.
I'm no Chinese philosopher or student thereof, but I'm pretty sure that TAO is a Daoist concept, not a Confucian one.
OSSO had me flailing up top
But of course, WATER as rebus wouldn't work with the downs... especially the one where the H is in the middle of a down, like I CHING
TAO is simply the Mandarin word for way, which is why it's in quotes for this clue; Confucianism also certainly refers to a 'way' (道, TAO), even if the word carries different connotations than Taoism.
Revealer could have been something like 'water over the dam', and the grid could have had little pictures of dams in the black squares.
As usual, the grid art fails as the angle in water molecules is about 105 degrees, not 90 degrees.
Bad clue for TAO. Not really anything to do with Confucius.
Looking forward to our punsters take on NEWS CREW.
Surprised me too when T(D)aoism was linked to Confucius, but, well, it’s on the same continent. Is that close enough for crosswords? And then I blew the ICHING answer, not to mention KITHARA and SHARENTING. Had the same momentary confusion as Rex with regard to HOO vs HOH but that was easily fixed. Once had a lot of business contacts who were big oyster fans so had heard a lot about RMONTHS, but that had faded far back in my memory banks.
An appropriate puzzle for a rainy morning, redeemed by Rex’s musical choices. Is there a sillier looking instrument than the keytar? And that Ella recording has some amazing scat singy-ingy-inging!
Does no one else object to "Gal Friday" for Girl Friday?
I’ll see your WATER and raise you TITO PUENTE.
https://youtu.be/EC-ht8-FrIw?si=0PnYyPc9lgJdkeX4
Hey All !
Too bad couldn't get WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE somehow in there as the Revealer. 1) Too long. 2) There's no "bridge". Ah, well. Maybe the Kevin Costner movie WATER WORLD?*
Funnily, had wAter in at 48A before grokking the Theme. Figured it out at the HW of HUTT next to NEWS CREW. Let out a Huh?, then erased HUTT, finally seeing WINGS, and said, "Oh, the H must be WATER, along with those O's, that means the other circled square is another H. Let's see if it is WATER also. It is!" (Have I mentioned that I talk to myself a bit? 😁)(IM OK, really)
Anyway, got easier after that. I'm sure the fill wasn't too easy to do. And there's only 34 Blockers. Impressive.
Enough from me. Time to get THE H out of here.
Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
*OK movie, but a little long. Also like his The Postman. Man, that was waaaaay too long, 3 hours, and did not need to be.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Indeed, and it stayed there for some time before I decided it had to be wrong. The NW corner played a little weird.
One of my fasteners rusted away so I had to get a NEW SCREW
The problem with puzzles like this, in spite of any other merits it may have, is that once you get the gimmick - which, in this puzzle, is obvious very early on - too much of the puzzle becomes merely filling in the blanks - like an exercise you'd give a 3rd or 4th grader.
It’s both.
I think this was the best puzzle this week for solving pleasure. It was smooth with some bumps that made it interesting. The theme was solid and well executed. Yes, having WATER was gratuitous but not egregious. Only real dislike was SHARENTING.
SGLOVE? No, SMITTEN
Aren't you Mrs. Lennon? UHNO.
Where can I park at the ballgame for under $25? CLOT
A Russet, to a Yukon Gold: POTATOSKIN
Replacement for an old nail: NEWSCREW
NORSE: An RN in Oslo.
Is it perhaps “water under the bridge”?
If you get right down to it, both are offensive to women, but as an oldster, I’ve heard both.
Yep! Kept the NW tied up for quite some time.
I almost want to say, "objectively, not that hard". Actually I do want to say that, to add to Gary's list, but honestly I'm not sure I'd agree with the "objectively" -- these things are almost never objective. Anyway, after getting the idea, it was a question of whether the water entries would include any downs, or whether the O atoms would be in on the fun. Not hard to figure out.
SHARENTING, yuck. Some attempts at puns or portmanteaux do not leave a good mouth feel with me. I wonder if anyone has tried "karenting", as in a mom who habitually raises a ruckus anytime her kid gets less than a good grade. That's about as good as sharenting, IMO.
I agree with Rex about NEEDED ASAP being awkward. That one has a kind of "ate a sandwich vibe" that, well, isn't great. Some of those long downs don't do it for me (also sort of agree about PER DIEMS).
I am regularly amazed that Rex homes in right away on correct answers starting in the NW (see that screenshot). The NW was for me the most perplexing section. Why did Rex put in ALL ME right away, even though he comments later something seems off about that -- why didn't he put in "my bad" right away instead (as I tried). How does SCARP come to him right away, even though he said that looked ODD as well (and despite the ill-starred-looking RM... coming down). How is it that ALLA goes in right away, instead of say "osso"? It's his inerrancy that really gets me. Putting in STANDINGH right away is also impressive, although Rex's command of chemistry is a bit less impressive. ;-)
Okay, that's all for now. I must shove off. Have a good one.
I still don’t know how R connects with oysters.
Liked this much better than Rex but it was very easy to solve once the theme was grokked.
I guess my only comment on SHARENTING is that it is out there IRL and I think the portmanteau is apt. I guess these days all parents are proud of their kids (like the old days) but they figure people don’t HAVE to look at posted photos (unlike the old days where SOME people would stand by you as you go through the photos…and comment)
Anyone else singing:
“Tato Skins got baked potato appeal,
‘Cause they're made with potatoes and skins that are real!”
No? Just me?
According to Simeon’s notes, he turned this puzzle in without any circles. Had it been published like that, the revealer WATER would not, as @rex asserted, have fallen flat. Without the circles, it would have been clued something like [Caret-shaped compound depicted four times in this puzzle], and had I not figured out what was going on, it would have set me on an aha-filled journey, ending in a cloud of wow.
Without the circles, the reveal is perfect.
Without the circles, IMO, this puzzle is consistent with the sterling quality of all Simeon’s others.
There is a bridge, but it's in a clue (Puente). Sorry.
An interesting contrast up north (and not at all atypical in a Shortz-approved puzzle). Start out with a golden oldie in R MONTHS - is there such a thing as a “golden ancient” or a “golden medieval”, as that phrase has probably been around since they started naming the months. Add to that a NYT classic - try to sound hip and current by adding a cringeworthy quasi-word like SHARENTING. I always get a schadenfreude-like chuckle when I see the Times devolve into self-parody.
This is a banner day of sorts for me. It’s a rarity indeed when a Thursday theme gimmick is too simple and rudimentary even for my tastes. At least they squeezed “caret-shaped” into the clue for the reveal (even though it should be more accurately characterized as a simplistic chemical representation of the structure of an individual molecule - in reality water is fluid, dynamic and constantly in motion at room temperature and ONE G of atmospheric pressure).
Hey Lewis! Welcome back!
No es ... eso.
Holy schmolie this took me longer than most Sundays, but I was determined to finish it, and I am kinda proud I cracked it.
I had them all as H/WATER rebusipodes, so that creative bit of solvology needed erased before the congrats screen appeared.
Starting with SCARP meant I would be finishing with SCARP as I'd never seen such a thing, but finally decided it must be related to escarpment. I don't know what that is either, but I've heard of it before. And R-MONTH could have started with any letter. The little white boy troll who inexplicably follows me around yapping like a Chihuahua trying to straighten out my comedy presumably knows when Schrödinger's oysters are boxed up and I should've called him.
List me among those of the Pro-POTATO SKIN faction.
I recently went to several years of college for guitar, and still needed crosses for KITHARA, so that either indicts the university, my quality as a student, or the KITHARA marketing department. An hour on YouTube led me to be pro-KITHARA. One more damn thing with strings I just gotta have.
"Physics unit" sounds like an editor with a Master's degree in literature needed to clue something science-y, and after reading the Wikipedia page for OHM decided all it said was, "Blah blah blah."
I loved working in a black and white darkroom and it's a way more interesting communication medium than COLOR PHOTOS. I was pretty good at it at one point in my life, but alas, digital cameras came along and ruined everything.
I imagined those fancy sheets as the ones on my bed, and it took a beat wondering why they'd be watermarked. But you know rich people with their brand-awareness are inscrutable folks and maybe even sheets need logos stitched into their high thread counts.
I don't know about you, but I got bloated retaining pizza.
❤️ DEM's da breaks. SMITTEN. SHARENTING.
😫 GAL Friday. ODDER.
People: 5
Places: 0
Products: 3
Partials: 2
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 12 of 74 (16%)
{Whoa! Seriously?! This is the lowest amount of gunk in years. A dry wind is blowing through the empty streets of Gunkopolis and the founding fathers are weeping in the temple.}
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: Flaming sword. NEW SCREW {Take it away @egs}.
Uniclues:
1 Backwoods cousins in love.
2 Powder from the Harry Potterverse designed to turn you into a smarmy weasel.
3 Thought from one bleeding out.
4 Spilled the tea about (ehem) your latest item joined to another object by an incline plane wrapped helically around an axis.
5 Add butter, sour cream, cheese, chives, and Fakin' Bacon Bits.
6 Purpose of pop music.
1 DEM SMITTEN KIN
2 DRACO DUST
3 CLOT NEEDED ASAP
4 DISH ON NEW SCREW
5 POTATO SKIN EDIT
6 I'M OK SONGS SOAR
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Goth girl crashing the prom. PALE NON-ALUMNA. Followed by: What I say when a goth girl crashes the prom. WHOA! AMEN SISTER!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Without hesitation! It was my first answer, in fact.
I think there was a NY Post headline when the Marla Maples thing went public: Trump SMITTEN by NEWSCREW.
I thought that Diversity/Equity/Inclusion programs and all other aspects of DEISM were now illegal.
They say that Mussolini would drive from town to town issuing orders from his saucy little Italian sports car, lending a new meaning to ruling by FIAT.
Mrs. Egs pretty much lives for online shopping, so her good days are UPS and her bad days are No UPS.
Since each H-O-H molecule gets used twice, a more interesting revealer could have been RECYCLEDWATER. I sometimes wonder, WATER we doing here, but thanks for sharing your WATER supply, Simeon Seigel.
Since I knew SCARP, the NW went in zip zap, and I saw that we were dealing with WATER because STANDING, but I never did bother to see the caret connections that you science guys saw immediately. Fortunately that operation was unnecessary as most of the rest of the puzz was pretty easy.
TIL SHARENTING which strikes me as acceptable but I'm happy my sons choose not to do that with their children. EDEN was guarded by a flaming sword? News to me. I've been playing guitar since the 60's--mostly the same songs I started with--but had never heard KITHARA, nice piece of information.
And of course the best part of today was the inclusion of my favorite animal, the ODDER, with a nod to egs and Liveprof.
OK Thursday, though not enough challenge SS, he Said Sadly. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
I agree with Lynn 8:01.A bonus: An understandable, easy theme.🎈🎈🎊🎊
I respect Ella's instrument, but that's not the Blues.
Try this one on for size (weird video too): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA9jwzjwXsw
Geologist here, so SCARP went in right away (I know it in general, plus I just defined it for one of my classes about two weeks ago!). I had STAGNANT water instead of STANDING water (which fit with the N of the 14D Kealoa [UHNO/UMNO] that I knew); I knew SMOG would make more sense for an ecological concern, but SMUT (as in corn smut, not porn) could have fit the bill as well, so NW took a while before it worked out.
Others have raised some nitpicks; I'll add the POTATO SKIN clue: potato skins aren't made by peeling potatoes, they're made by scooping the potato 'meat' out, leaving the skin behind. So they're really 'A remnant of scooping that's appealing?' not 'A peeling that's appealing?'!
What @Beezer said. It hearkens back to a time when it was standard practice for ALL women in an office (regardless of their status) to be called “the girls” and - the most demeaning of all - when male executives thought of and openlyreferred to their secretaries as “my girl.”
Agree with both @Josh and @Beezer on all counts.
When we first read the clue (___Friday), saw a three-letter answer, and ruled out TGI (clue would have needed to be in quotes), my wife said out loud "better not be GAL". When it was finished by the crosses, it got verbal "ugh"s. Unfortunately dated.
@tht 8:20 AM
"Karenting!" 🤣 I actually think that is the subtitle of this blog.
In the first episode of Lou Grant, in 1977, Ed Asner's eponymous character meets the owner of the newspaper he's hired to work for. The owner, played as steely and smart by Nancy Marchant (long before she became Tony Soprano's mother), is doing a crossword puzzle, and needs a ten-letter word for "cliff." Lou volunteers "escarpment." And that's how I guessed "scarp." Anybody else?
And then there’s Grand Sharenting, somehow even more annoying.
Interesting backdrop to the puzzle. And IMO your analysis is spot on.
Welcome back, Lewis!
I got a Saturday's worth of puzzling out of this. Themed puzzles aren't my thing and I was slow on all aspects of this theme. Ironically SCARP was so obvious I immediately typed in SACS for 1D and then it just sat there forever by itself. I was even slow on CLOT.... sheesh! NAAN is an SB classic, ALLA not so much. Like a number of people I was confused by OSSO only I couldn't quite picture that word either.
KITHARA was an unknown. ICHING reminded me of "Dark Shadows" that's probably where I was first exposed to the term.
Caught on to the trick early, but stupidly tried for two O's and one H for water instead of the reverse. Once I realized my mistake, I just needed an alphabet run for the DRACO/ICHING cross.
I like to include my husband in my solves when the opportunity arises. As a fire chief for close to 30 yrs, 27A: Powerful fireboat gear was all his.
Him, “Can it be what they’re not actually called?”
Me, “Yep, that’s perfect for crosswords”
Made me chuckle.
tht, you make some great insights about Rex's solving prowess, exemplified by the early NW screen shot. And he had "trouble" with both SCARP and ALL ME per the write-up!
Sometimes I think of Rex (and others who frequent here) and XW solving like I think of Tiger Woods (in his prime) and other pro golfers. I play golf but it's not at all the same game as they play.
Yuk to "SHARENTING" as a thing, but I think it's a fine puzzle answer; it tells it like it is. And in the same way, I'm with you re "Karenting". They're out there, unfortunately.
Double whammy side-eye to potential puzzle answer that's fortunately too long to be an actual thing.
Clue:
Was "starving", say
Answer:
NEEDED A SANDWICH ASAP
Oops, I guess that would fit in a Sunday grid. Sorry if I gave anyone ideas.
Ok puz for me. Certainly easy enough once I got the theme, which was pretty early. Might have been more challenging if they hadn't put those little connection indicators in.
Never heard of IHEARTRADIO but have heard of ClearChannel. And not in a good way. Pretty stupid rebranding name but I guess when your original one becomes so toxic you need to adopt a disguise rather than, y'know, actually changing anything, you do what you gotta do.
Unfortunately, seeing I HEART RADIO left a very bitter taste in this one.
Had Rex made this the WOTD, we'd all have read things about it like "hosts, distributes and produces numerous conservative podcasts and radio shows, including Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Ted Cruz" and "is known for playing a significant role in broadcasting right-wing commentary". Given its behemoth reach, it's like the radio version of Fox News, and helps explain why the current criminal narcissist in the White House still has 30% favorability.
Got the "water" and the "O" and thought it might be playing with "eau" but that notion quickly "evaporated"!
HIJKLMNO
I take issue with the "O"s not being part of the theme! Those should have been water answers, too. No O, no water--just a bunch of Hydrogen.
Let me join the "Welcome back Lewis" chorus. I hope that your miserable back has now become a welcome back.
Dao is used widely across many very different Chinese philosophies, and just means "way" (sort of the underlying nature of all things). It's not exclusive to Daoism by any means, despite the name.
Clearly I wasn't at the top of my game today - I did Rex's HO2 instead of H2O for a little while, sufficient enough to hold up HERO and DISH ON. oERO looked pretty strange at 49D. And then, I read the clue for 62A, read "caret" but my brain formed an image of a carrot and I thought, "Really, since when?" Goodness me!
I liked finding the various water phrases, after I figured out the trick at, of all places, RETAINS [WATER].
My Mom always said the best part of the POTATO was the skin so we always saved them from our Russets for last, to fill with butter and enjoy by themselves.
Simeon Seigel, I thought this was a fun Thursday gimmick, thanks!
Counterpoint, Stuff You Should Know is their number one podcast. I’ve listened almost since the beginning. Josh is daily even-keeled. But Chuck is pretty openly anti-right. Over all, their discussions feel very left leaning and a little off-putting to conservative ears. So the company isn’t pushing a right wing agenda. Their agenda is make money on existing properties that are making money.
OK puztheme, but The Circles, whose contents were always HOH, kinda watered down its difficulty. Better to gush some more difficulty, on a ThursPuz.
staff weeject pick: DEM. One of dem wacko weejects.
primo weeject stacks, NE & SW, btw.
Brightest spots, at our house: Wetted COLORPHOTOS. SMITTEN. NAAN & ALLA foreign menu palindrome mini-theme. NEW SCREW & NEEDED A SAP.
Another day when STANDINGH made m&e stare at its realm for many extra nanoseconds, until figurin out what-the-dayumed-water was goin on there. Finally had m&e an OHO moment.
Thanx for the water park ride, Mr. Seigel dude. And yep, agree it woulda been neater without The Circles.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I had the same irk. For me, it’s not a central enough concept in Confucianism to warrant the reference, even in quotes. Janky misdirection; there has to be better cluing.
Count me in as another who has STAgnaNt water before STANDING water, which contributed to my troubles in the NW corner. It's interesting that Rex highlights SCARP as being a problem spot for him when his screenshot reveals that he had that correct within his first handful of words. I guess at a certain level, anything that delays you for a few seconds is noteworthy.
Me too!
You should only eat oysters in months that contain the letter R. The “non-R” months are June, July, August,
The advice goes that you should only eat oysters in months that contain the letter R. This would exclude May, June, July and August. Because the oysters are spawning during these months, and the water is warmer, there is a greater chance of contamination.
The only thing I know about chemistry and molecules and stuff is that H2O is water, but why isn’t the H-O-H pattern O2H?? One O, two Hs…??
Now that would have made it a Thursday puzzle. I think Simeon was ill-served here.
Glad you're back!
You prefer the media all have one slant?
That sounds….. totalitarian.
Grandmother in the park with her grandson. A gentleman remarks: Is that your grandson? He's beautiful! She replies: That's nothing. You should see the pictures.
What kind of fantasy world fo you mive in where ohm as a physics unit leads you to disparage the efitors?
Why this enflees and apparently irrational animus?
I knew about SCARP from the Suffolk Scarp in southeastern Virginia. It's about the only geographic relief you get in that area.
If the spelling of the month contains an R, oysters are in season. Ie, avoid oysters May - August
Had the same irk. I’m not convinced the fact the word appears in Confucius is justification for its being “Confucian”. Surely there’s a better way to clue this.
Osso went in immediately as the Italian menu palindrome- as in osso bucco. So that held up the northwest until the end.
This puzzle intimidated me - 'starting' with 1A SCARP. Felt more like a Thursday. I'm impressed Simeon and thank you (I think) :)
Welcome back, Lewis 👋
@mmorgan, not sure what you are asking but a water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atoms. In the form H2O, the 2 is a subscript of the H term, indicating two atoms of hydrogen.
Yes - Immediately thought of 'Good' but then saw it was 3 letters :(
AND (just thought of it) WHAT WAS WORSE is when they used to say "My girl will GET YOU COFFEE!!!!!!!!!
SACS (a gimme) made MY BAD impossible. I lucked out w ALLA (never considered OSSO). SCARP did not come to me right away. I’d heard it but was unsure if it and wouldn’t have even thought of it w/o crosses. I do small stuff first and work crosses of long answers before I ever look at their clues. I almost never put in an answer 7+ w/o at least one cross dead to rights. Also, things happen so fast that it’s actually hard sometimes to Perfectly recreate the solving process. I discuss it as discrete steps but it feels much more like an ongoing flow. I have lots and lots of speed solving experience and can toggle through short stuff faster than most. There’s no real secret. I am often wrong /ignorant, and I get lucky just like everyone else
I enjoyed this puzzle more than Rex and grasped the theme early on, which allowed me to fill in the Hs and Os across the grid to speed things up. As others have mentioned, I’m not sure why the Hydrogens were used in the "WATER" rebuses, but not the oxygen. I’m sure there’s a reason, but I can’t figure that out. As it stands, the themed squares (circles?) are only the Hs. I’d like to see a XW puzzle with a bunch of HYDROGEN-containing theme answers. There’s Hydrogen Bomb, Hydrogen Sulfide, Hydrogen Peroxide (and every other chemical with "hydrogen" in the name), Hydrogen Bond, Heavy Hydrogen (aka Deuterium), Green Hydrogen (eco-friendly fuel source), etc.
I tried "TGI", but that obviously didn’t work with the crosses; never heard of GAL Friday. But I’m only 70, so probably before my time.
Very interesting behind the scenes info, Lewis. Yes, absence of circles would have made this much more challenging…and fun!
I take umbrage with your condescending tone, re: OHM. It’s a well-known unit of electrical resistance familiar to anyone who finished the 10th grade and Georg Ohm was a great physicist and giant in the field of electricity (you’re familiar with electricity?). He was the first to recognize the mathematical relationship between current, voltage and resistance (Ohm’s law). I’m just an ignorant physician, but even I am very familiar with ohm, his law and the unit of resistance named for him.
Oops - Today IS Thursday 😳
You're only supposed to eat oysters in months with an R in their name
... and not a drop to drink.
Easy-medium. I caught the theme early and filled in the circles.
I did not know the “fun fact” COLOR PHOTOS or the I HEART RADIO broadcaster or the neologism SHARENTING. I also did not know KITHARA.
Costly erasure Hour before HERO.
Pretty smooth given the constraints plus cute and clever, liked it.
Liked it on the whole but didn’t like that the gimmick was always the same (as happens often these days) and really disliked the terrible SCARP/RMONTHS crossing. Once again I had to guess and guessed wrong. This is the sort of problem that should be fixed in editing.
A very wheelhouse-dependent puzzle today, or so it seems to me.
For those who took high school chemistry and retained the memory of the H-O-H structural notation for H2O, all the circles were gimmes, the themers became obvious, and with those long acrosses in place, the rest was pretty darned easy. For everyone else, imagine it was a bit more challenging.
It was a near-personal-best Thursday for me, and a very rare late-week puzzle where I finished without needing to read all the clues. Leaving the circles out of the grid would have made the themers less obvious, and the puzzle a bit more challenging.
Pablo, thanks for pointing that out. I missed it completely!
Lynn, I didn’t pay much attention to SHARENTING while solving this morning, but since then I’ve read not one but two articles today at The Atlantic’s website about the horrors of sharenting. What a destructive way to monetize your family!
Yes! Very unhelpful.
As the doctor says, OHM is a well-known unit of electrical resistance. That is quite different from the vague and clunky "physics unit" which sounds like a segment of a Physics 101 class. Anonymous 10:51 might want to slow down his nastrygrams long enough to check for typos
@Unknown 9:28 am, I knew it from the Niagara Escarpment.
I saw the note and looked at the grid on the NYT web page, and right away thought: those could be water molecules! So H-O-H and away to the races. The puzzle went pretty smoothly.
I was quite surprised at the low Grid Gunk rating from Gary today. It seemed to me a lot of names: OHM TITO FIAT CATO HUTT DRACO ERICA GEOS IHEARTRADIO. And of course KITHARA and SHARENTING are totally new to me.
At least I got SCARP from the Niagara Escarpment!
This only applies to wild oysters you might harvest yourself. Farmed oysters - the ones your supermarket or fishmonger sells - are sterile and, therefore, don't spawn.
Yeah, All us non-chemists would love that.
Oh! I forgot to suggest that they could have skipped the revealer, and just made it so the black squares formed the characters H 2 0!
Agree with Rgbruno. From Wikipedia "Per diem (Latin for "per day" or "for each day") or daily allowance is a specific amount of money that an organization gives an individual, typically an employee, per day to cover living expenses when travelling on the employer's business." I have only come across this usage. Th
@Les S. More. Does the sterilization by-product get sold as Rocky Mountain Oysters?
"His Girl Friday", is one of the greatest comedies of all time. Its from 1940 and use of this phrase should stay with period pieces and not be inflicted on us.
I don't have to worry about whether it's an R MONTH or not. I quit eating oysters back when some friends got hepatitis from eating them. Here's what the CDC says: "Raw oysters are dangerous because they are filter feeders that concentrate bacteria and viruses from coastal waters, most notably Vibrio vulnificus [and the hepatitis A virus]. Consuming them raw can lead to severe foodborne illness, intense infections, or death, particularly for individuals with weakened immune systems, liver disease, or cancer."
There was an article on the NYTimes web page about how to tell if your therapist is legitimate or not. The accompanying illustration is of a person lying on a couch as seen over the therapist's shoulder. The therapist is holding a note pad and pen. The note pad is a crossword puzzle grid! Looks like they have taken down that article. Maybe got an objection from the Games department.
Humblebrag, maybe, but we were recently in Italy and, having enjoyed Spaghetti Alla Gricia (*chef's kiss*) one of our last dinners there, ALLA was actually our first thought and, until reading here, hadn't considered OSSO. Better to be lucky than good.
I had "sta" from the downs and confidently put in stagnant water, slowed me down for a bit. Sharenting is and sounds gross, like another much much grosser pormanteau, but it's quicker than "parents who over share their children's lives on social media"
Jeepers some people are testy. My read of Gary's Ohm criticism is with the rudimentary nature of the clue, not of the esteemed Dr Ohm
@Gary, does Gunkopolis (assuming from context it's a country) have citizenship availability? Depending on the outcome in November, there may be some application requests from among this crowd.
Agreed, seemed inconsistent to me as well
@Gary, I know what you mean about stringed instruments. I have a banjo, a mandolin, an electric bass, a regular electric guitar, two acoustic guitars and last year I decided I wanted to play the dulcimer like Joni Mitchell. Unfortunately, most of the instrument are strung for right handers because my Dad kept buying them for me at auctioins and I play lefty. And I haven't spent enough time with the dulcimer to master it. So I need to stay away from kithara websites.
Torture the "editor"!
Thanks, Anon, that clears it up — I thought that H2O meant one H and two Os!
At the hospital, some nurses work PERDIEM, which in that context means by the day/as needed. As opposed to regularly scheduled.
Really enjoyed this excellent Thursday H2O puzzle. I had not noticed that the two Hs and one O were appropriately arranged as carets (clue 62A) until I came here - thanks, Rex. And let me add welcome back, Lewis! Very nicely constructed. TIL DRACO, thank you!
This puzzle reminded me of Flanders and Swann “Ah, H2SO4, Professor “ and their funny song on thermodynamics
This one fought me tooth and nail but it was a fun fight. Grokked the theme relatively quickly at RETAIN but like @Rex and others, got it mixed up and was thinking two O's and one H. I think it took me longer than most to self correct there.
A whole lot that I didn't know today but happy to learn. SCARP is a new vocab word for me as well as KITHARA, and I'm not familiar with ERICA as clued. Along with ERICA in the SE, RICE , EDIT and PASS for whatever reason were a long time in coming, so while I'm familiar with IHEARTRADIO, it didn't come easily without those crosses. So I spent a lot of time there trying to figure things out.
Agree with @Rex that the revealer could have been more exciting but it did it's job.
Chem is not my bag so the theme itself, while clever, didn't exactly float my boat. That's a Hugh thing not a puzzle thing so no nit there.
I thought the fill was OK. As much of the long ones were themers and part of the gimmick, I can't say they looked all that pretty in the grid, I mean HPITCHERS at first glance is a little meh. COLORPHOTOS is nice though, and SHARENTING, while new to me and the concept makes me wince, seems like fun fill.
Clever stuff, Simeon. Thanks for this.
I had "strip tease" as an appealing peeling, which seems much more apt than potato skins
I bumbled my way through law school but must have been absent when Ohm's came up. Is it at all like Burke's Law?
Hated every minute! Ridiculous puzzle for a Wednesday
The puzzle in the paper had no connection indicators. I took Chemistry in high school, but we never studied the shape of molecules, so the indicators would have meant nothing to me anyway. I solved the puzzle, but had no idea what was going on until I read the blog. I just kept wondering why the circled letters weren't all the same - some were "O" and some were "H/water." It just seemed arbitrary to me.
or ... 'water over the bridge'
..
I think you're supposed to "follow" the molecule from H to O to H and then into the second clue... so it's the whole molecule that represents one instance of WATER. For example, RAINWATERPITCHERS.
...Actually, the theme might have been more interesting if he had added a clue for "rainwater pitchers, " etc.
That's not a humblebrag... it's just a brag. :)
Bloated from retaining pizza 😂. That’s me typically, but for sure, the full year I spent in the ‘70s trying to perfect pizza from a home oven - before the internet, or professional home appliances, or mobile phones, or real home pizza ovens. It was so hard to source San Marzano tomatoes and whole milk mozzarella (in Oklahoma) back then. But after we met some of the descendants of the Italian miners who populated Krebs, OK (including a local pizzaiolo) while camping over there, I at least had a source! And learned so much.
Exactly right. I wanted salaries!
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