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Carpet on the forest floor / SUN 6-28-26 / Intellectual gathering / Architectural feature above a belfry / Little redhead in a long-running Broadway show / Oily fruits / Summary of a contract's details / Souvenir from the seashore / Catchall phrase from Latin
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein and Christina Iverson
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: Down in the Valley — Phrases with the word "like" indicating comparison are reinterpreted as if the "like" were a filler word
Word of the Day: QUARK (11D: Hadron component) —
A quark (/ˈkwɔːrk, ˈkwɑːrk/ ⓘ) is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei.[1] All commonly observable matter is composed of up quarks, down quarks, and electrons. Owing to a phenomenon known as color confinement, quarks are never found in isolation; they can be found only within hadrons, which include baryons (such as protons and neutrons) and mesons, or in quark–gluon plasmas.[2][3][nb 1] For this reason, much of what is known about quarks has been drawn from observations of hadrons.
• • •
Theme answers:
- SOLD LIKE HOT CAKES (23A: Was an employee at IHOP, in Valleyspeak?)
- SHOOK LIKE A LEAF (32A: Fanned some Egyptian royalty, in Valleyspeak?)
- WATCHED LIKE A HAWK (47A: Did some birding, in Valleyspeak?)
- STUCK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB (70A: Hitchhiked with a hangnail, in Valleyspeak?)
- DROPPED LIKE FLIES (89A: Made some outfielder errors, in Valleyspeak?)
- BUILT LIKE A TANK (108A: Prepared for some new pet fish, in Valleyspeak?)
- WORKED LIKE A CHARM (121A: Performed some witchcraft, in Valleyspeak?)
It's Rafa back again for the last installment of Rafa Rexplacement Weekend™-- I hope you've enjoyed my musings over the last few days. The sun is finally out in San Francisco, it's pride weekend, the vibes are immaculate, and we have a crossword to talk about. Let's get into it.
For some reason it took a while for this theme to click for me, but I really appreciated it once it did. There was something very satisfying in imagining all the theme answers said aloud in a Valley accent, and the scenarios in the clues struck the right balance of amusing but not absurdly far-fetched. Picturing someone sticking out a literal sore thumb to hitch a ride made me chuckle. Themes reinterpreting words are very common to come across, but I've never seen anything playing on filler words, so this felt really fresh. I also appreciated how all the phrases were very well-known. SHOOK LIKE A LEAF is the only one that I don't hear all the time, but it still felt familiar enough.
 |
| NIGIRI -- yum! |
One thing I noted is that some of the entries had words change meaning and others didn't. HOT CAKES has the same meaning in the idiom and the clue, but FLIES means the insects in the idiom, and the baseball term in the clue. Similarly, HAWK (same) and TANK (different -- military vehicle vs. container for fish). Not a bad thing, just something I noticed.
 |
| OJS -- yum! |
The fill was ultra smooth for a Sunday -- truly world-class work. Not a lot of contrived entries or crosswordese ... just loads of smooth short fill with lots of possible cluing angles. I find that makes it so much easier to stay engaged with the bigger Sunday-size grids when you're not wincing at all the glue that's holding the theme together. We even get loads of lively bonus entries in GOOD LOSER, SOAP STARS, ABOUT TIME, KNEE-DEEP, etc.
 |
| KRILL -- yum! (if you're a whale) |
The puzzle was on the easier side for a Sunday for me. This whole weekend felt significantly easier than usual. I wonder if other people also had this experience. Or maybe I was locked in because I knew I was blogging these puzzles. I love feeling Smart and Competent, though, so definitely no complaints about it from me!
Thanks for tuning in for three consecutive Rafa blogs. I'm done with my stint, but I hope to be back soon!
- SALADA (22D: Course in a Brazilian meal) — First time I've seen this clued like this (it means salad in Portuguese) instead of a tea brand, and I'm extremely here for it!
- HELIOS (5D: Greek sun god) — I've been playing Hades 2 on Switch on and off for the last year, and it has taught me pretty much everything I know about Greek mythology. Helios isn't in that game, but now I really appreciate seeing stuff like HERA and ARES in crosswords.
- RAJAH (1A: Counterpart of a rani) — Rajah is a title for a king, while rani is a title for a queen.
- MEN (98A: "It's Raining ___" (gay anthem) — Fun pride month tie-in.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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84 comments:
Dios mío, es hora de rendirse.
See, Sundays can be fun. I like every theme entry. Even though it's Valley Girl, not Valleyspeak (and not everything from history needs to be reengineered to be gender equitable), and even though the whole fad is like totally way dead, this felt like a fun throwback for Elder Gen-Xers. I loved pronouncing the LIKE like a VG.
Pretty sure at 37% Gunk and 18 names we're gonna hear some grumbling about trivia.
BURNT is extra extra crispy, right? Or being too high, right? Or still not getting the primary message from your dermatologist, right? It's how you end up after driving the Road to Hana, right?
It's OHO, not AHA.
❤️ TOOTHY. They shine during the day. ABOUT TIME. You had one JOB.
People: 16
Places: 9
Products: 9
Partials: 12
Foreignisms: 7
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 53 of 145 (37%)
Funny Factor: 8 🙂
Tee-Hee: TEAT.
Uniclues:
1 Answer to the question: Where did this wacko Christian Nationalist survivalist cult come from?
2 Prosthetic legs after the alligator's brother ate half of you.
3 Invite the smiling James Bond from New Zealand up to your hotel room (where you plan to shake, not stir).
1 BOISE WORKED LIKE A CHARM
2 CROC GOOD LOSER ADD-ONS (~)
3 ASK IN TOOTHY KIWI SPY (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Phrase shouted during Zelda-nerd gatherings. OCARINAS! PRONTO!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Easy. No real problems with this one, although I did need to stare a bit at SHOOK LIKE A LEAF before the hieroglyphs kicked in.
Clever, breezy, and amusing, liked it.
@Rafa - this was an easy weekend for me too.
This was(wait for it).... like really easy. I did have a STOOD/STUCK write over and I wasn't expecting HECKNO and didn't know NASH so there was a little confusion there but otherwise smooth sailing. I even remembered DESI
Yay Rafa! I like the "yum" theme of your post. And it rhymes with THUMB. NIGIRI looks tasty. KRILL... not so much.
Sundays are usually a slog for me; today included. But once the "valley girl" gimmick made sense, it was fine. Reduced answers: SOLD HOT CAKES, SHOOK A LEAF, WATCHED A HAWK, STUCK OUT A SORE THUMB, DROPPPED FLIES, BUILT A TANK, WORKED A CHARM. Pretty CLEVER!
All Canadian option: at square 85, BEER crossing RIEL (clued as "Manitoba rebellion instigator") would be awesome. So Canadian!
To channel Rex, this one flops. This one was yet another annoying gimmick phrase Sunday. Like, who really cares if you can change a well-known phrase by removing the word like? None of the new phrases are something anyone would really say. Stick out a sore thumb? Build a tank? These are sentences, but so what? And this really has nothing to do with Val speak. Listen to Frank and Moon Unit's "Valley Girl" and, yes, the work "like" is used a lot, but it's the unique phrasing and 80's specific slang that stands out. Every youth since has overused the word like to the point where it isn't generation specific. If they wanted to make it Valley specific words like "tubular" and "totally" should have been added. Now that would be a puzzle!
First let me say that I have much respect for both these women as puzzle makers but this was not their finest work. I kept asking my self when this would be over. Only half way there? Oh, damn.
I mean Valspeak. Really? It was bad enough when it was new. I feel compelled to complete every puzzle I encounter but I was sorely tempted to ditch this one. Sadly, I didn't.
*STINT
A leaf is Egyptian royalty? Huh?
Thanks, @Rafa, for your lively and entertaining critiques!
The puzzle was Very Easy. Basically no resistance at all. Whoosh from beginning to end, except for a typo that at first prevented the happy music. But as OSFL [Our Substitute Fearless Leader] said, the fill was good and the theme was cute.
* * * _ _
One overwrite, the 7D Shakespearean conjunction was E'En before it was E'ER.
One WOE, fashionista ELLA Emhoff at 112A
Ridiculously easy. And, for me at least, boring. I do it on paper and work from the bottom up so got the witches answer first. Told my wife they're going to have "like" added and was able to fill in most of the themes without many crosses. Not fun.
Just when you thought Sundays couldn’t get any worse. Whatever - LIKE this was grody to the max.
Johnny Are You Queer?
I too found the whole weekend easy. While I had a fast time for Sunday, my Friday and Saturday times were each faster than Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
It’s a good thing OFL was off today. I stopped by to see how much he detested it!
I thought this was very easy and I LOVED the theme! Each of the theme answers made me smile. As with @Rafa, the only one I didn't get right away was SHOOK LIKE A LEAF--I don't think fanning and shaking are synonymous, but I still enjoyed it once it became clear. Same experience--easy weekend, but every now and then there's nothing wrong with that.
Definitely a wavelength misfire today. I’ve enjoyed RG and CI’s work in the past and was hoping this collaboration would be a hit. I just kept bumping into stuff that I just had no idea about (even though I got the theme construct early on).
I thought the theme entries were actually pretty good, the rest of it just felt like going to the dentist or something. Just not my day today I suppose.
As a Renaissance English scholar, I felt *super* embarrassed with how long it took for me to remember that ERE, in addition to being an adverb and a preposition, can also be a conjunction (combined with the fact that I wanted the milk source to be something like OATS or ALMONDS).
But I agree that the puzzle played easy, while being enjoyable on a simple level (probably too simple for a Sunday). It’s a one-trick pony and allowed for a lot of filling in part of the answer once you got the trick, but the answers that involved changing the meaning of words were fun to uncover. Rex might have been critical of the inconsistency Rafa points out, or of the inconsistency of some of them being “___ LIKE A ___” while others were “___ LIKE ___,” but that’s a minor inelegance.
A few crossings caused me trouble from unknowns crossing hard-to-recalls (TAOS/YSL/OLGA, RAJAH/ROSA, NIGIRI/ARGOTS, MAUI/KAUAI), but I don’t think they were by any means unfair. Actually, I’m happy to learn ARGOTS, which feels like a useful term.
Maybe just a nit, but I was annoyed at the clue [Stepped up to the plate] for BATTED. I mean, I see that it could work; one who BATTED in the past tense had indeed stepped up to the plate beforehand, but they’re not equivalents; one who is currently at bat but has not BATTED yet also stepped up to the plate beforehand. I also noted the dupe of SHOOK LIKE A LEAF and LEAFLET—I know the LEAFLET is a leaf of paper, but the paper term comes from the foliage term.
I liked this a lot. Very cute. Agree with others, the SHOOKLIKEALEAF puzzled me.
Nice to see The Little Prince here. It's one of my favorite books.
I tried speaking this with an accent (the accent), and my wife simply said, "You do not sound like a Valley Girl!"
No, what you should imagine (I think) is a servant cooling an Egyptian monarch with a palm frond. The servant SHOOK, LIKE, A LEAF.
Rafa, thanks for the fine essays this weekend.
Hey All !
Like, totally! 80's speak at it's finest!
Was hoping Rex would have returned today, as I think he would have not liked it as much as Rafa. I was thinking along the lines of him saying it's too old, too cliche, not enough of a thing anymore to be a Theme. I'm probably wrong, because it seems whatever I think Rex would say about any particular puz, he says the opposite.
Anyway, grid is 22 wide, in case ya missed that. An extra column, netting you an extra 21 squares. 80 Blockers, which is spot on in an oversized grid. Six Cheaters, but that's fine to get clean fill. Filling a SunPuz is no easy task.
Liked it, even though if you take out the LIKEs some of the Themers sound incorrect. Example: SEARCHED LIKE A HAWK becomes SEARCHED A HAWK. However, WORKED LIKE A CHARM becomes WORKED A CHARM, which is feasible. And the top Themer is the only one without an A. Nits ...
Good puz, ladies. NW toughest area for me today. Finished in decent Sunday time.
Hope y'all have a great Sunday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Yup, an Easy puzzle and to my mind some silly fun and well-constructed. Not so much to others wanting a tougher challenge or bored by the valley-girl speak. De gustibus…..
As an intermediate solver, I found this one interesting and medium challenging. Thank you. I very much enjoyed.
A relaxful pleasant puzzle to solve on a Sunday.What was there not to like?🎈🎈🎊🎊
My goodness. It was fun! Perfect way to start the day. Some chuckles. Some thinking. Later.
The letter "K" is frequently a dead giveaway for any cross, so liKe in every theme made for a lot of easy crosses.
It's hard now to like not type like like in every like sentence after reading the themers all at once. I agree with anon 2:04am (imagine that!) that it is no longer generation specific, but was initially associated with VG.
Thanks Rafa for the 3 day amuse-bouche of positive commentary. I don't have to wait for Lewis for the positive twist:) "The sun is out for pride week in San Francisco" is a great sentence to read. Actually, I find that RP has been pretty upbeat in his commentary even for puzzles he didn't like. I think he would be more picky about the themes changing the meaning inconsistently.
Seeing HAWK has me thinking that we might have just seen it as a rhyme for HOCK, or am I imagining that? Feel free to discuss (actually regionally rhyming is one of my less favored topics here).
Whole weekend too easy, but a pleasant first week of summer nonetheless!
"Shaking like a leaf on a tree" is a line in Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gimme Three Steps. I'm now laughing about Elvis singing "I'm all like shook up"
In Crossworld, a three-letter singer may be Sza AURORA.
When a whale gets the munchies he'll move in for the KRILL.
What you wait for after stubbing it: toe to HEAL.
What you see after dropping your bar of Lifebuoy and slamming your head into the wall bending over to retrieve it: SOAPSTARS.
When I'm driving in town and pass a buddy on the street, I will often use my horn to TOOTHY.
Via Facebook, I'm a member in good standing of the Dull Men's Club (UK Chapter). (My daughter heard of it and thought of me immediately. It's open to Americans (and women), despite its name.) A few years ago, I noticed the obit of a survivalist in the NYT. It was Tom Brown Jr. He wrote books and developed courses on surviving in the wilderness, tracking, etc. He was 74 when he died. The headline said something like "Noted Survivalist Dies." I liked the irony of it, so I shared it via a post in the Club. One of the members commented: He had one job.
Loved the puzzle. Thanks, Ladies.
18 minutes for me this morning, which is close to my PB. I think the cluing was off.... I know we don't want to be pro-military in our puzzles, but nobody builds their own fish TANKS. BUiLT, LIKE, A TANK should have been clued something like "worked for General Dynamics." Also agree that when you are fanning the Pharaoh you are not really "shaking" the palm frond.... You're waving it. But those are nits, all the themers were fun. Especially liked the 22-wide grid spanner in the middle. I didn't even notice the wide grid and I still flew threw it. Enjoyed GOODLOSER and ABOUTTIME. Are we on day 7???? Thanks, Rebecca and Christine, this was a lot of fun!
Woke up on a Sunday morning, saw 1-Across vs. 1-Down and rolled over to go back to sleep
The color is aqua. Singular. How many Urkels in a week? Two Hawaiian islands. Two Norse gods. The constructors did well, though valley speak is still painful to hear, but the editing, again, was awful.
Very Easy. Almost every answer went in without hesitation. I found it too easy in fact. The theme was also very easy to figure out. Easily the easiest Sunday puzzle in recent memory.
Those people who think Rex would have detested this... mm, I don't know. There is a certain wackiness factor that could well have appealed to him. And haven't you noticed that he uses the "Like, ..." construction all the time in his write-ups? Like, just about every day. (Like, is that a deliberate choice? Or is it like the way he talks in real life?)
I'll offer a wriggle of an indulgent smile at this creation, but I have to agree that I've seen better by these two fine constructors. Cute, but nothing to get excited about.
Don't get near those biblical locusts
Draining the blood from a pierced sow
Raise hares
(answers below)
Didn't I see that mule named SALON the Erie Canal for about 15 years?
Speaking of which, with SALON, AXON, OREGON and ADDONS, maybe the theme should be "Write on".
If you found out that you were related to former Washington quarterback Sonny Jurgenson and that he was coming to visit you, you would be in a position to ASKIN ASKIN ASKIN.
I was, like, really tickled by this puzzle. It's a great theme idea and I chuckled my through. I agree with @Rafa and others that the whole weekend was easy as pie, but still fun. Thanks @Rafa for the solid commentary. And thanks for a really fun puzzle, Rebecca Goldstein and Christina Iverson.
AVOIDLIKETHEPLAGUE
BLEEDINGLIKEASTUCKPIG
BREEDLIKERABBITS
Very Easy weekend puzzles, almost half average time, but I prefer easier Sundays.
I liked today's collab. Not like like liked, but liked. "Like, you know, whatever." Fun puzz, thank you Rebecca & Christina.
Thanks Rafa Musa for the guest blogs. Your name always reminds me of the NYT typo, "Mufasa Kemal Ataturk" instead of "Mustafa" (2/28/2025).
I really mucked this one up in the NW. I had no idea what the counterpart of a Rani was, so ended up with meSA as the CA city, and eroDE as the Rust answer (which didn't sit quite right, but felt plausible.). boLT instead of JILT which gave me mibAH for the Rani counterpart and irON for the one acting on impulse (which didn't really make sense, but figured it might be one of those tricky clues whose answers eluded me.). I knew my mistake was somewhere in there, but figured I had a letter wrong somewhere, not that I had completely missed the boat on the entire corner. So DNF for me.
Really enjoyed figuring out the Valleyspeak clues - love that you actually had to work on those to finish the puzzle instead of it being irrelevant to the solving experience.
Easy and quite disappointing. When you get the first themer, it's clever and you look forward to seeing what other twists lie ahead. Instead, it's the same darn thing over and over.
'shook like a leaf' was the funniest and most dismissive of the lot. actually, i can like totally picture that.
"Like" I loved it, ladies :)
Fastest Sunday solve for me ever.
Thank you both so much for a fun, enjoyable Sunday!
Yes, Rafa, thank you :)
Why is Maui / Kauai not a Natick?
Something about SHOOK LIKE A LEAF clued as fanning Egyptian royalty (or a RAJAH) just makes me smile. So CLEVER!
Thanks, Rebecca and Christina, for a very fun Sunday puzzle!
Wow. I’ve defended the hell out of the last couple Sunday puzzles. But expected to finally find myself with the critical majority today. But…no…many people liked THIS ONE? One minor gimmick, that basically gave you a HUGE hint on every themer? One of the lamest Sundays ever to me. I miss OFL today…I’m quite sure his take would have been much different than the sub’s.
It gets very easy once you realize that the theme is just LIKEs over and over. I RAN LIKE THE WIND through the whole grid, fastest Sunday ever for sure. I do like- uh, appreciate the cluing angle on SHOOK, LIKE, A LEAF and some long Downs like- uhhhhh, such as ABOUT TIME or KNEE-DEEP.
I know for a fact that Rex would've flipped after seeing that J-X corner plus the Q in the north, as well as the unnecessary X from PAX and J from OJS. The puzzle isn't even a pangram, there's no Z.
I thought this was inspired...and the hits just kept coming (for me, anyway). I especially enjoyed the report of the coven gathering..."So this witch, she worked, like, a charm?" I know, there's no accounting for taste, but they all hit my sweet spot.
I knew very few of the trivia/names, so wasn't the easiest for me, but theme was dumb in a good way, and I agree with Rafa that the cluing kept the boring stuff engaging enough. Overall felt more fun than recent sundays for me, and enough of a struggle to get me through my morning coffee. Nice work!
Yeah, I had BLUES at first, which worked. I think of “aqua” as a specific blue (or green), thus not a plural.
Anonymous 2:04 AN
I think you missed what the theme is doing
The answers are common expressions with like in them. But we are to imagine them as unusual but clued phrase with the “filler” like in them. So of course “nobody says” stick out a sore thumb. That’s the wacky phrase as Rex sometimes calls them.
I had STOOD instead of STUCK, and that one error alone cost me almost half of my solve time. I simply couldn't complete that one little west section. So annoying (for myself).
This was not a particularly interesting puzzle. The theme was obvious and trite.
Seems like it just depends on your familiarity with the name of Hawaii's major islands (The Big Island or Hawai'i, Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Lanai, Moloka'i, and Ni'ihau. Some people would count Kaho'olawe but it's uninhabited). 5 years ago that would have been a tough cross for me too.... but then my sister-in-law moved to MAUI, and last year we visited and spent time on the Big Island and Oahu as well. So I'm more familiar now. Haven't been to Kauai yet, and might not make it.... Hawai'i is expensive!!!
I mentioned earlier that I wasn't a fan of this puzzle but I did extract 5 minutes of joy. A comment by Anon 2:04 am spoke of Frank Zappa's collaboration with his daughter Moon on a song called Valley Girl. I could kind of remember the tune and a few of the expressions and by mid-morning (my time) had decided to revisit it. A lot of fun. Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I
I'm quite surprised... 50% liked it, 50% really didn't. I'm in the first group, and I usually hate Sundays!
I laughed til I cried at the one job story.
This tickled my funny bone - each theme answer elicited a chuckle. Thanks!
Agreed. The definition of a slog, regardless of the level of difficulty. Felt way longer than it took.
I remember Sonny walking off the field and began pointing below his belt toward the ref. Tom Brookshire, the announcer, said keep the cameras on Sonny;; he doesn't seem to like the call.
SORE appears twice in same puzzle? On a Sunday?! In the NYT!? Did the editor take the day off?
Even easier when you catch on early, which I did ..I did find the wackiness factor enough to make me enjoy this one.
One write over with SNARF VS. SCARF. I was solving online for a change and wouldn't have bothered to correct it if I was solving on paper, but I heard no congratulations and went to Check Grid" and there it was, so there goes my streak of almost one day. Oh well.
Nice enough Sunday, RG and CJ. Relly Good California Jive. I Like, liked it, but I don't know if I liked liked it, if like, you know what I like, mean. Thanks for some, like, fun.
I’m surprised more people didn’t say this. It was for me!
@egs, nice job on the alt theme answers, especially #1. It did take me a few tries to parse the middle ASKIN.
FLOCK is a transitive verb? OK, if you say so...Liked this puzzle overall...cute thdme, and a few very clever clues, like the one for LENT. Keep up the
good work, ladies!
@Anon 2:52
Future reference, the NYTXW always use SNARF for eating. SCARF is a neck wrap, not eating something.
Roo
Definitely on the easier side for me today, at 69 percent of my average.
I "liked" the theme today, but it was "liked" like "oh, that's an interesting idea," not quite like I "like liked" it. All right enough of that. I did find it entertaining, but since similes use "like" so often, there should be plenty of these to choose from. To be sure, I suppose that makes this less impressive more than less fun. And I do like DROPPED LIKE FLIES. The crossword does like its baseball clues (BATTED for "stepped up to the plate").
"Light into" was a tricky clue for LASH AT, I have to say. Whew! I found it trickier than SHOE for "pump, say," but that took me a bit too. I liked the MAUI/KAUAI crossing.
To me, "got just right" means more "baby bear-ed" in a "not too hot, not too cold" sense, whereas ACED I would use when scoring out of a maximum score. Got a hundred on, that sort of thing. I'd say a GOOD LOSER is one who has grace more than manners, but that's a nitpick of the last water.
Is an SSN a W-2 requirement? Or just something that it has on it.
Errors: ADZ or AWL for AXE. SCARF for SNARF. BOSSIER for SASSIER (?!). LARGEST for COLDEST. OLAF for OLAV. FOOD for EATS. ET ALII for ET ALIA. Just another Sunday.
Hey, what's not to, like, not like?
Had some humor to it, and a clever puztheme mcguffin, sooo ... ok SunPuz, by m&e. And more squares for yer moneybucks : a 21x20's worth.
fave puzthemer was SHOOK, LIKE, A LEAF. Hope the Egyptian fanner dude can find a bigger one than, like, what we got in our valley.
staff weeject pick. 28 choices! Weejected, like, nobody's business. M&A will go with the beddy BYE weeject.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Ms. Goldstein & Iverson darlins. Good work.
Masked & Anonymo8Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
This is incorrect. SCARF is frequently the answer to clues about eating. [Wolf (down)], [Inhale, as dinner], etc.
Hey-that's me! Don't know how I became Anonymous.
Roo, it was WATCHED LIKE A HAWK, which is WATCHED A HAWK without the LIKE, and that's what the birder did (WATCHED A HAWK).
Roo
It’s WATCHED (like) a hawk. That works I think.
You saw it in Connections. "Words that contain homonyms of birds" or something like that. And I was appalled!
Anonymous 2:30 PM
You asked so I ‘ll answer. It has been obvious for years that there is no rule at the Times against dupes. They happen all the time Rex, who doesn’t like them, says he will only criticize the most egregious ones. (His words). Dupes don’t bother me but I am puzzled as to why so many think there is a rule against dupes in the Times
(Anything goes except a dupe in the same clue /answer combo.). The editors are following Shortz rules so they don’t do anything wrong. C
Anonymous 4;05 PM no one is questioning the meaning of the verb scarf it is just that the Times at least in the last few years almost always goes for SNARF like today. I have no idea why. Ii remember, because it annoys me.
Like, I did not like the gimmick.
I agree both weekend puzzles have been stunningly easy this week. I finished the Saturday in under 10 mins and this one in under 17 mins. Wayyy below my average on both. The theme was cute though.
Except the answer wasn’t SEARCHED LIKE A HAWK. It was WATCHED LIKE A HAWK. So it becomes “watched a hawk,” which makes perfect sense for birdwatching. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the theme because I thought it was all too easy for a Sunday but I don’t think it’s fair to say the clues didn’t make sense.
Anon 728 again wrong, that *is* what Roo said (“always”) and it’s simply wrong that SCARF / SNARF is not an *ongoing* dilemma. SCARF has been used many times in recent years. This is objective verifiable fact. Databases exist! Don’t condescendingly tell solvers it’s “always” SNARF when it absolutely positively is not.
SCARF can also mean a type of timber joint. Web page description; it is a pretty neat joint. I hope someday, but will not hold my breath for, it to be clued as such.
The discontinuity in the themers cannot be forgiven. Boring in their sameness in the first sense, disappointing in their sameness in the other sense.
My observation, which can be negated at any time by the editorial crew or commenters here, is that “snarf” is what humans do and “scarf” is what dogs (pets, animals) do. So when I’m faced with a clue that goes one of those directions, I treat it as a kealoa but keep in mind my rule of THUMB.
I don’t think you’re reading it right. When you use “like” in this sense, it’s not something you can just remove from the sentence and still expect it to work. You’re missing the heavy lifting that “like” handles in lieu of several words.
LIKE @Les S. More, this really turned into a slog. unLIKE Les, I enjoyed the cleverness of the seven themes; but that gave seven gimmes to hunt for, and enter LIKE.
So the puzzle itself was super easy, with 26 3-letter and 44 4-letter words, most of them at entry solving level. The two areas where 4 three-letter words intersected (GAP AHA PAX AXE and OJS JOB SPY BYE), well to me their cringiness STUCK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB. A steep but necessary price to pay for the long theme answers.
I know these constructors are accomplished; today was not my favorite one of their works, sadly.
7D was ERE
Am I being nitpicky to say "Pump, say" should be "Pump, e.g."?
Anonymous (9:05): I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing. A pump is a kind of shoe, so "pump, e.g." seems ok to me.
Why does NYT publish this with a theme which disparages a group of people by way of making fun of their speech? Surely a constructor who is a NYT puzzle editor should know better!
That is incorrect, I have a friend who who built two fish tanks bc he could not find tanks big enough for his needs. Aquariums probably build their own tanks as well.
As a Boisean I take great offenses. The cult is from
Moscow, 300 miles north of Boise.
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