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Conventioneer's passport / THU 6-25-26 / Sharansky who wrote the memoir "Fear No Evil" / Country rocker Steve with the album "Exit 0" / Gamer's state of invincibility enabled by a cheat code / 1492 caravel Spanner of 11 time zones / Cantina freebie / The Science Kid, in children's television / Front-line hero during the 2020 pandemic
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Constructor: Tarun Krishnamurthy
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: INSIDER / TRADING (63A: With 65-Across, market no-no ... or a hint to entering the answers to the starred clues) — blocks of letters "inside" the theme answers (in shaded squares) "trade" places, creating new (unclued) words and phrases
Theme answers:
Gotta get out of the house very early today, so this'll have to be quick. Quickish. Despite the fact that the theme answers were probably discovered by a computer program, and despite the puzzle's interest in things I'm not personally that interested in (gaming, Marvel movies), and despite the puzzle's being a little on the easy side for my tastes, I really enjoyed this. At first I was like "why do the shaded squares spell out gibberish, I hate gibberish!?" but then I realized that the entire reconfigured answer was a viable (if unclued) answer, and the shaded squares weren't supposed to, and didn't need to, spell anything. The dark bars between the "traded" parts of the answer create a bit of visual confusion (me, rearranging BAD RAPS: "What the hell are BRAP ADS? What's a "brap" and why does it need ads?"), but once you get your bearings, this theme is actually very easy to work through. Six themers and a long revealer, and the fill holds up OK. Yes, I will take this. Again, would've liked more of a challenge, but I say that almost every Thursday (and other days ending in "day") now, so there's no surprise there. If it has to be easier than I'd like, at least the experience of solving it was pleasant.
- BAD / RAPS => BRA P/ADS (17A: *They may result in people being wrongly sent to jail)
- WEE L/ASS => WEAS/ELS (18A: *Bonny young girl)
- TRAIN/ERS => TER/RAINS (23A: *Exercise experts)
- FEM/INIST => FINE / MIST (35A: *Advocate of women's equality)
- "STEP / ON IT!" => STON/E PIT (43A: *"Let's pick up the pace!"
- WEB/INARS => WIN/E BARS (54A: *Some online courses)
Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי; born 20 January 1948) is a Ukrainian-born, Israeli politician, professional chess player and author. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018, and currently serves as Chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization. A former Soviet dissident, he spent nine years imprisoned as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s. [...] Fear No Evil is a book by the Soviet-Israeli activist and politician Natan Sharansky about his struggle to immigrate to Israel from the former Soviet Union (USSR). The book tells the story of the Jewish refuseniks in the USSR in the 1970s, his show trial on charges of espionage, incarceration by the KGB and liberation. (wikipedia)
• • •
There's a lot of overcommon fill (ESSO ESA SID NSYNC ATBAT ANODES PTA NEA TSP BAA ORES OREOS NEO NSA), but somehow that never became grating today. Nothing ever made me recoil or cringe or groan or any of the other negative reactions I sometimes have with creakily filled puzzles. Mostly I just liked watching the answers change into other answers, and I was happy that whatever subpar fill there was didn't interfere with that. I didn't get bogged down in the less-than-lovely stuff, and so I was better able to appreciate the theme, and the other nice bits of fill as they came along (like EGO BOOSTS and OVERTHINK and the HOT GLUE BLEEPS, which would be a great band name, though it's actually pretty hard to say without tripping over your tongue. My main negative feeling today was the indignation I felt on behalf of NATAN Last, who really should've been the subject of the NATAN clue. I mean, imagine you work for Will and then write tons of crosswords for the NYTXW (and elsewhere) and then write a whole-ass book about crosswords (a well-received book, I might add—Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle) and then your not-terribly-common / not-shared-with-a-celebrity name shows up in the puzzle and the clue is somehow not about you? What's a guy gotta do to get some grid recognition!?
This is just the third appearance of NATAN, with the previous two clues going once to this same Sharansky guy we got in today's puzzle (1993) and then once to no one in particular (2018) ([Hebrew name meaning "he has given"]). I guess Saransky remains the more (most?) famous NATAN, but I have no way of measuring NATAN fame, as the only NATAN I know is Last. If his fame outside crosswords seems limited—who cares? We're not outside crosswords. We're inside crosswords. Literally, that is where we are. Anyway, I learned about a new NATAN today. He seems like a crossworthy NATAN. He's just not my NATAN.
Bullets:
- 7A: Gamer's state of invincibility enabled by a cheat code (GOD MODE) — I tried LOOK and PEEK before GAWK (7D: Get an eyeful), so though I was fairly certain I was dealing with a "mode," the GOD part eluded me for a bit. As soon as I got the "G" I was like "d'oh! GOD MODE. Yes, I've at least heard of that" (this is not always the case with video game clues).
- 56D: Preceding time (RUN-UP) — as five-letter answers go, this one's great. Hard to make me like, or even notice, a short answer like this, but there's something about RUN-UP that's slightly slangy and very bright. Peppy, even. Why AT BAT feels limp but RUN-UP feels snappy, I don't really know. (side note: I had AWAKE before AT BAT (1D: Up)).
- 21D: Falcons' group (USAF) — so not the football Falcons (the ATL Falcons), but the Falcons of the United States Air Force Academy. They're the Falcons, the way Michigan is the Wolverines. I thought maybe there was some famous USAF squadron called the Falcons, but no, just the team name. Here's a new clue for NOVA:
- 58D: 1492 caravel (NINA) — a caravel is a small sailing ship. Even if you didn't know that, 1492 should've kinda given this one away. NINA leads all Columbus's ships in terms of total crossword appearances, though PINTA has shown up an awful lot (122 appearances), and for a ten-letter answer, SANTA MARIA also gets a ton of action (19 appearances, though not seen since 2009).
That's all for today. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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73 comments:
Average Thursday time, no real resistance, figured out the theme as soon as I worked my way down to the revealer, and finished the puzzle before finally realizing that the unknown-to-me WEB INARS was in fact WEBINARS. Fun Thursday solve while watching El Tri handle Czechia Wednesday night.
Very Easy. Didn't read the clue for any of the acrosses with shaded squares. Cute theme.
* * * _ _
One overwrite, @Rex looK before GAWK at 7D, and only one WOE, Country rocker Steve EARLE at 37D.
Pretty cute little trick - the shaded squares were annoying but the idea is neat and the reveal works. Since both entries are valid - it took a few to understand the game - FINE MIST/ FEMINIST worked for me.
My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
Densely packed with theme stuff - the overall fill suffered somewhat. Rex summarizes nicely. I liked OVER THINK and EGO BOOSTS but there was a lot of short stuff that fell flat. The SIR - RONALD cross reminded me of RONALD FISHER - so that was cool.
An enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
Steve and Iris
Easy, yes. I figured out the theme quickly, except I had "inapt" instead of INAPP and falsely assumed the system had failed to produce the music. So...a Natick.
Cute, densely packed theme. 18 minutes for me.... but it was just complex/slow. I wouldn't have been able to do it, I don't think, without that nice revealer.... Not hard, just couldn't whoosh around this grid much. Nice puzzle, Tarun! 4 days w/o SW!
So you had STONE TIT? That is not a Natick.
The revealer was so easy and so clear (thanks to the shaded squares) that even though it took me awhile to parse the themers, it was obvious what needed to be done to make sense of them.
Very typical Thursday for me - I finally got the theme when I entered the reveal and picked up on webinars. Unfortunately, that meant that about 80% of my solve was spent parsing together the gibberish theme answers. I thought I was getting better at discerning themes, and this one really wasn’t all that difficult, so obviously I still have a ways to go.
As I look back on it post-solve, it actually looks like a decent grid and a clever concept. SHIP was a WoE. I notice that they chose the word “pairing” in the clue (instead of RELATIONSHIP), so I can only guess that SHIP is somehow derived from RELATIONSHIP, but that’s all I’ve got for that one - I’m trying to imagine how one would use it in a sentence, but I’ve got nothing, not even a wild guess.
Hey All !
Tough to get clean fill with open corners such as those in this puz, especially with Themers running rampant through them. So kudos on that, Tarun. Only needed one cheater square to pull it off.
SHIP has an odd clue. Must be young 'un speak. Ah, clue does state "in modern lingo".
Had ptA for NEA, only to find that PTA needed to be in the connecting Down.
Nice, easy side ThursPuz. Different type idea. Good times were had by all. 😁
Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I thought the wierd answers that morphed into real answers were great fun to suss out. Quite a feat of construction. And the last clue for BLEEPS was super. But above all I was touched by Rex’s praise of NATAN Last—Rex may have occasional fun jabbing the editors of the NYT puzzle, but at heart he seems to appreciate the dedication and skill that goes into its daily publication. I feel the same about Rex’s long dedication to this blog.
TERRAINS uses a different pattern than all the others. That seems like a flaw.
Mostly easy, but then there is that NATAN/EARLE mess.
I did not know SHIP last time and, sad to say, there is a good chance I won't know it next time.
GAze before GAWK.
Well, the brain that saw the phrase INSIDER TRADING, then stopped and mulled for a bit, and envisioned conjoining letter sets within actual words switching places to form other actual words – that’s constructor brain of the highest order.
Uber-high-quality playful themes have marked all four of Tarun’s Times puzzles (his first published two years ago when he was 16). That is, he’s the real deal.
Today’s puzzle brought not zero, not one, but two resounding ahas.
The first came upon seeing the trick, which was followed by great pleasure, because it made my brain think in an out-of-ordinary way – reversing letter-groups in words – to suss out the remaining theme answers. My brain loves switching gears like that.
The second came at getting the elegant, perfect revealer.
Tarun, I’m glad you are keeping your crosswords talents active as you pursue your medical studies (as you describe in your notes), because you’ve got the knack. Thank you for a splendid outing today!
OK. Then it's a Worcester.
Respect the theme idea and got some joy out of much of the longer fill, but I didn't have as much fun with this as @Rex did. The revealer came fairly easily and for me, and then it was a real Thursday level experience trying to grok the themers. Those bold lines kinda got in my brain's way and hindered rather than helped. I should have had more fun trying to figure them all out, but for whatever reason, I didn't. Not sure why, as it's nice that the themers all form real words with the letter "trading"... and very good words at that. Each would stand very well on their own as non-themers. So I think it's just me today.
Speaking of non-themers, some good fill with the longer stuff, OVERTHINK, EGOBOOSTS, and HOTGLUE are all very solid. I also got a little kick out of the double YUKON/UCONN, that was cool.
I for one was very happy to see NATAN Sharansky getting some crossword recognition. Look him up if you're not familiar with him when you have the time.
Even though my personal joy meter didn't hit terribly high today, I know that there was a *lot* to like about your puzzle, Tarun. There was some serious and deep crossword thinking to make this all work, much respect and thank you!
What was the reason for the dark lines? Jumbled letters were shaded and bars didn’t split equally or create meaningful words, so why include them?
My well-below-average finish time tells me this must have been an easy-ish puzzle, but my solving experience felt more medium-challenging, in a good way. The crosses gave me WEASEL, but I couldn’t see how that answer could possibly fit the clue. (By the way, I don’t mind stale fill when it supplies badly needed crosses.) Had to work around all the themers till I got to the revealer. Then the lightbulb came on and I tinkered with the themers until they all fell in place. TERRAINS was the last to fall, maybe because it varied from the pattern of the others, as kitshef has noted. Unlike Southside Johnny, I found that a fun little brain teaser—just what I enjoy on a Thursday. Nice work, Tarun!
I’ve read NATAN Last’s book and greatly enjoyed his excellent puzzles, but I can see why Will Shortz may have nixed using his name as a clue. I did many, many puzzles for more than a decade before I ever paid attention to a constructor’s name. Now I can savor the personality that shines through a well-made puzzle, but I suspect that most solvers (not the ones here, of course) are more like me in those early years. I’ll bet there are many, many people who have done Natan’s puzzles with pleasure but with no idea who he is. Sad but true.
Tarun must be a Huskies fan: Both YUKON and UCONN appear in the grid.
Years ago my wife and I had tickets to see a concert by a popular boy band, but it was such a nice day we had a hard time tearing ourselves away from the pool. It was a question of NSYNC or swim.
Re: ID BADGE. A funny tour guide in Killarney told this joke at which I was the only one on the bus who laughed. Tough crowd.
A Irish farmer is visited by a government inspector who tells him his farm has been selected to undergo an inspection by the farming commission (or whatever). The farmer says "Help yourself. Just don't go into that area behind the barn." At that the inspector takes out his badge and says "Sir. This badge signifies that I am an agent of the great Irish Republic fully authorized to investigate every inch of this facility and I will not be deterred from carrying out my duties in their entirety." The farmer says, "Go right ahead then" and returns to his chores.
About twenty minutes later a great commotion can be heard coming from behind the barn. The farmer turns and sees the inspector being chased across a field by a very angry bull. The inspector has thrown his clipboard and hat away and is running for his life. The farmer cups his hands around his mouth and yells: "Show him your badge! Show him your badge!"
and STED ON IT. Natick is for proper nouns crossing that are insurmisable, not for stuff you just missed.
I liked the UCONN /YUKON connection too and it always amuses me that they are the UCONN Huskies..
Fun rebus Thursday. I wasn’t too sure of run up in the meaning of preceding time.🎈🎈🎊🎊
Across Lite had circles but no dark bars, which definitely made it harder and more interesting. The dark bars give the game away.
Hilarious, Bob! I love the idea of coining a “Worcester” for the experience of failing a solve because of a cross of answers that are spelled correctly but you just can’t see that they aren’t the right answer. Happens to me far too often.
Now that JD Vance is a renowned Catholic working for the Grifting Moron, the Church is having to fine TUNESIN. For example, wrath is no longer a sin if it is directed at democrats, RINOs, females or non-whites.
I agree so heartily with @Rex about NATAN that I filled it in backwards as a protest. TESSA, OTOH, sees an asset when she looks in the mirror.
While IDBADGE [Conventioneer's passport] is not wrong, I'd just like to point out that an Ego Badge would be more appropriate at some conventions. Of course a conventioneer might be seeking idBOOSTS as part of the whole thing.
I love the letter A. Capital A, small A. NEA is better than none.
My granddaughter signed up for T-Ball so I got her ATBAT.
Primo theme idea. Turned out to be surprisingly easy to suss out. Still, I liked this one a lot. Thanks, Tarun Krishnamurthy.
The first clue that caught my eye was for RONALD MacDonald which led me down to the revealer, which was easy to suss out, and then up to STONEPIT and the revealer had done its job. Good time getting the other themers, and fun that they made (sort of ) actual phrases and words. My only reservation was at WEASELS, as I had read the clue as describing a "bony young girl", which made WEASELS feel like piling on. My bad, of course, but pretty funny for a while.
Today's unknow young'un speak included GODMODE, SHIP as clued, and INAPP. Live and learn. I did know Steve EARLE but only because at our regular Monday night hootenannies someone will say "Here's a Steve EARLE song" and play something I've never heard but which I usually like. Agree with OFL that NATAN is the crossword guy, because this is what we do.
Liked your Thursday a lot, TKM. Hope The Kudos Multiply as more comments come in, and thanks for all the fun.
I loved this. Yes it’s too easy for a Thursday, but the theme compensates for that somewhat since it’s a bit complex. It took some thinking to figure it out, and I thought the revealer was absolutely perfect. It all came together beautifully with a smooth flow creating an enjoyable solve which is all I need. So thank you, Tarun and congratulations on the new job.
If you’ve never seen Trading Places, it’s really pretty good. A vintage Eddie Murphy flexes his trademark comedic style, and Ackroyd is solid as the snobby rich guy. Then there’s Jamie Lee Curtis in all her drop-dead youthful glory. And if that isn’t enough, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy have a great time together holding up the background in supporting roles.
Great write up, Rex. I too enjoyed today's puzzle. Solid Thursday.
@egs 🤣🤣🤣
Sorry, but for me this was a hot mess.
HERE'S THE THING: Unclued answers ARE gibberish!!!!!! Who cares if they spell something out if it's unclued?????? You've harped on this before (justly, I believe) but now it's ok???? Bra pads, weasels, terrains.....these words have no bearing on anything, and (as I say) MIGHT AS WELL BE GIBBERISH!!!!!! Zero stars.
Wasn't wild about INSIDER TRADING as a theme, what with the (alleged😉) M.O. of the current administration's leadership. Maybe if the clue indicated a market no-no "before 2025".
But we needed the theme to figure out the role of the shaded squares and dark lines, as the theme answers (as written) were included. Impressive idea; and the short stuff wasn't terribly grating. Oh, Rex said exactly that word. EGO BOOST for me.
Wanted Censor at first for 71A, but the singular wouldn't work. Wanted Fauci at first for 2D. Needed to OVERTHINK them both.
Was skeptical that Nabisco OREOS were in McDonalds's McFlurries, but lo and behold it was confirmed by the AI-generated answer, replete with a plethora of (circled R) symbols.
You swap the places of the letters on eaither side of the bar. In 17A, you put the AD where the RAP is, and vice versa. In 18A, you put the EL where the AS is, and vice versa. But I agree it would have been less confusing to just leave us to "unscramble" all the shaded letters. The bars confused me at first.
Hmm, I don't think it uses a different pattern. You put the RAIN where the ER is, and you put the ER where the RAIN is; they swap places. That's the same in all the themers.
The letters on either side of the dark lines swap places. In that way it's more of a swapping feat than an unscrambling feat. Took me a while to figure that out.
I thought this would have been better without the heavy line showing where the insider trading should be parsed. In the olden days that wouldn't have been there, and likely not even the shaded part! It was so fast it wasn't much of a challenge with the game highlighted.
I haven't read the comments yet so I don't know what others have said. As for me, this is the first time in a LONG time - maybe ever - that I had no interest at all in solving a puzzle. The hell with 'streaks' - I gave up a while ago with some of the puzzles of late. Rex mentioned "theme answers were probably discovered by a computer program" which could be the reason why I have just been giving up lately. Also NATAN cluing, when we have Mr. Last submitting puzzles - far more enjoyable than this one - for years.
I'm off to the Manny (Nosowsky) archives.
That's all I have to say .... ....
Is it the different puzzle grid? (The default print-out was the paper version, not the usual on-line version). Is it the dark, heavy divider lines evoking one of those Cryptics that I don't like? Is it the gray squares? Something about this puzzle took away my usual confidence when facing a grid and I ran away from the top of the puzzle after filling in OREOS and started with TUTU. That sector led to STEP ON IT becoming STONE PIT and I was off.
I hope I'm not reading too much into the theme, but should I be worried that the FEMINIST is morphing into a FINE MIST?
I'm trying not to OVER-THINK how SHIP is used in a conversation about wishing for a romantic pairing.
Tarun Krishnamurthy, thanks for a fairly gentle Thursday with an interesting theme.
Likewise noticed (and enjoyed!) the YUKON/UCONN double. When I first started paying attention to sports, I thought that the team was in fact YUKON, so it highlighted my silly mistake of yore.
Aceleremos el ritmo.
That was fun, but probably AI assisted. People are probably going to say they wish the gray squares weren't there, but I would never have finished without them. I figured out the jig early, but still a bit fiddly to plug them in to the form. The reveal seems like a waste of space.
The subtext here suggests if you mishandle the BRA PADS of bonnie LASSES the WEASELS will send you to jail on a BAD RAP. I assume it's normally best to let others manage their own under garments.
That clue for SHIP is classic NYTXW cringe. They have a whole crew approving these things and then, as a team, that's what they cherry pick from the universe of possible SHIP clues? When I bring up from time to time my belief they need to hire an adult down there, somebody will swoop in and criticize me for casting aspersions on the good people doing thankless work in the grid-making salt mines, but I think a simple ban on "in modern lingo" clues would be a good start toward improving all puzzles. I'd also recommend running EARLE and NATAN side by side in the direct center of the puzzle would be a great reason to reject this completely.
❤️ GODMODE. HOT GLUE. EGO BOOSTS. Twinkle-toed.
On a tangential note, my wife started doing the MIDI recently and her questions (and rather loud grumbles) have mostly all been crosswordese related or occasionally "that's not a word." I guess you have to learn somewhere how ridiculous things become it Gridville, eh? To say she hated today's outing would be an understatement. The way she grumbles through it I think she's the MIDI Rex Parker.
People: 10 {Just stop at 9 folks. It's better.}
Places: 4
Products: 4
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 26 of 76 (34%)
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: BRAPADS.
Uniclues:
1 Rodents used in hold-ups.
2 She burned down her (ex?) boyfriend's house and as a result the entire neighborhood when she was bringing him a lit birthday cake and some suggested it was less of an accident than it seemed.
3 Sailing vessel for those little plastic green soldiers.
4 Kindergartner's escape pod.
5 When you send in your picture to the TV station for your birthday (which they really do in Albuquerque).
1 BRAPAD WEASELS
2 WEE LASS BAD RAPS
3 TINCAN SHIP
4 "STEP ON IT" TRIKE
5 ON AIR EGO BOOSTS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sots snockered in a saloon. SOBER EXILES.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Enjoyed it overall—I’ve already echoed enjoying the YUKON/UCONN thing, and I also tend to enjoy the themes that produce double sets of answers where both are viable. I moved haphazardly around the grid without getting any of the themers, and thus the revealer was a nice AHA that allowed me to go back and finish the unsolved themers. Very nice.
Genuine question: Is there a problem with the clue [Bad start?] appearing in a puzzle where one of the theme answers (with the revised version) is BAD RAP? I hadn’t figured out the former yet, since it was a misdirect clue, when I was trying to parse the BAD RAP themer, and my first thought was that it couldn’t in fact be BAD RAP since one of the words was already in a clue. It didn’t bother me, and no one has mentioned it, but it did add some confusion into my (overall pleasant) solving experience.
PS--TK--Apologies for misreading your last name. The sentiment stands though.
A Worcester! LOL
Easily solved themelessly, ignoring another silly game. Can't wait for tomorrow and an actual crossword puzzle.
Surely it's BRA / PADS? I got stuck on GOD CODE.
Thanks. I honestly never realized that the suburbs of Boston had such specific applications in the crossword lexicon.
Ordinarily, I'm not fond of puzzles with anagram themes, but here the constructor did most of the anagram work and we only needed to do some INSIDER TRADING. Early on, I saw the WEE LASS in WEASELS but didn't understand the reason for the heavy black line until I went back to (mentally) turn BRA PADS into BAD RAPS and saw how we were trading segments and not just unscrambling random letter runs. That made the rest a lot easier to get. Nifty construction and fun to solve!
Yep, easy. I got a sense of what was going on with the shuffled BAD RAP but I mostly ignored the shaded squares and the bars and solved it by working around the theme answers until they filled in.
NATAN (Last I would have known) was it for WOEs and no costly erasures.
Clever and cute with not much junk, liked it.
I thought it was gonna be "equal" TRADES, 2 for 2, but BADRAPS is 2 for 3 and TRAINERS is 2 for 4, same construct, not actual "trades" though, fwiw.
Anybody else find it strange that the US Airforce uses a non native bird as its mascot? Don’t get me wrong, gyrfalcons are very, very cool, but…..
This will no doubt get deleted but I am very unhappy with Rex Parker objecting to the presence of Roald Dahl and Hugo Boss in his crosswords, but not Natan Sharansky, an ultra-zionist who has worked extensively with and for the Isareli government to help further their goals of the oppression and genocide of Palestinians. I often forget that the default left wing position among Americans is still supportive of imperialism and colonialism as long as it's towards arabs.
Thanks for that, I noticed it while solving and then could not recall it while in comments, looking back I see they are also sorta symmetrical!
NATAN upside down in protest made me rethink my plan to fly the confederate flag upside down in protest
Pick one: gray squares or black bars, both made it a little too easy but neither, I imagine, would have made it nigh on impossible, at least vexing and time consuming.
Loved WEELASS becoming WEASELS.
Learning some gamer talk (GODMODE). I've previously learned some rappers, Simpson characters, and Star Wars lore. That's good.
Unsurprisingly, I also thought of NATAN Last. I think indie constructors would jump at the opportunity to include a crossworld personality in a clue... not sure about the NYT or the other major newspapers. Now I'm wondering what the clue would be if ROBYN showed up in a NYT grid. Are there any crossworthy ROBYNs besides the one we all know and love?
I got the theme easily in the NW. Crossword instinct immediately gave me ANODES for 1A, but I still decided to wait for crosses.
STONE PIT looked familiar... it's one of the answers that got riffle-shuffled (into SET POINT) last Wednesday. And it also anagrams to NETI POTS. So many anagrams.
Jnlzbth. It is a different pattern in that you trade 4 letters for 2. Most of the trades are 2 letters for 2 letters. BRA PADS is 3 for 2. So no consistency.
Oops. I forgot Alaska. Carry on Nova.
Wowzers ... 6 puzthemers and a clever revealer. Themers with non-circular gray squares and them thick line dealies. Different. Like.
Didn't take real long to un-mask the theme mcguffin, at our house. Was wantin BADRAPS for 17-Across, even before fillin any of it in. A few extra precious nanoseconds of cross-solvin later, had BRAPODS, and figured it out, from there.
staff weeject pick: SID, which morphs to SIP, post-insider trade.
Science kid gets a SIP.
oooh ... SO(FA/FO)RTS ... sooo close. Surely, SOFO means somethin? [There seems to be a Sofo Foods brand, somewheres out there.]
some fave stuffins: NOTDONE. EGOBOOSTS. OVERTHINK. RUNUP & TUTU. BLEEPS clue. TUG clue.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Krishnamurthy dude. Man, way to find all them flexible theme answers! Did U suffer, or did U use AI?
Masked & Anonym007Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Once again, opened the puzzle and groaned "Circles again?" Then I saw the note and groaned "There's more?" Across Lite didn't show the bars so I took a screen shot of the web page grid. But still, it was confusing enough that I just ignored the "wrong" across clues, and filled it from the downs. Ended up with the Happy Pencil, and only then realized what the across themers were. Yikes. The theme is fine but it might have been clearer to show two clues for each themer, for the answers before and after the "trading".
I did like the symmetrical YUKON and UCONN. That is pretty much the only time I didn't object to a college abbrev!
A few too many names; jammed together like NATAN & EARLE, and NINA and ENOS crossing NEO... Ns everywhere.
I thought about this but then there would be nothing to figure out. If you clued for WEASELS, then it's just, "Oh hey by the way, you can scramble WEASELS to make WEE LASS,"...
I did too at first till I clocked that "code" was in the clue. Up till then, clueing cIS with "bad start" was bafflingly too false-flag politically judgmental to believe!
In all the others, the last two letters of the shaded area are swapped out. In TERRAINS only, it is the last four letters of the shaded area.
Actually loved solving the theme answers, lots of good ahas.
That's interesting. For me the bars made it more confusing.
I never like puzzles with unclued theme entries. Seems like unfinished business. Here we get six of them hanging out there all alone twisting slowly in the wind with no direction known.
All that theme and reveal real estate did come at a price. Much help was needed from the POC to get the grid filled. There's a bumper crop of single POCs when ANODE, ARRIVE, OREO, EGO BOOST, LP, PUB, and OAT all come up short of the their slots. Then a couple of ultra-helpful two for one POCs close out the bottom when ORE/ASSORT and SAGE/BLEEP both get boosted by sharing a single S at their ends. And then even three themers need POC help when BRA PAD/BAD RAP, TERRAIN/TRAINER and WINE BAR/WEBINAR are not able to do their jobs without assistance. The grid gets a solid "POC Marked" rating.
And 58D NINA should be " American composer, concert pianist, singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Simone" (wiki). The "1492 caravel" was the NIÑA.
Thanks, jnzlbth, for answering my question. Seems so obvious now but once I saw it as merely scrambling the letters, tunnel vision ensued!
You might want to go with Wayland, which is much more of a Boston suburb than Worcester. It almost sounds like "waylay", whose second definition in MW is "to temporarily stop the movement or progress of (someone or something)", which seems apropos.
Really enjoyed this great puzzle and the write up, thanks to all! Funny clues and great revealer - very appropriate for our times!
I solved NE then SW, SE and finally NW.
My printout was tiny today so most of my difficulty was keeping track of minuscule numbers
With all due respect to Natan Sharansky, I think he'd agree that more more famous than him ishis namesdake, the biblical prophet Nathan (Hebrew NATAN) who fesrlessly accused King David after David had slept with Bathsheba, and then sent her officer husband Uriah the Hittite to certain death in the front line. Nathan told David a story about a rich man who had a guest but instead of feeding him from his own numerous flocks, he took a little lamb from his poor neighbor whose only possession was that lamb. When David heard this story, he immediately said, "That rich man deserves to die." And then Nathan said in words that have resounded downb the millennia "You are the man". (This is a short summary; read all about in II 2 Samuel 11:2 to12:7).
What the hell's a "freemium" and what does INAPP even mean??!!
The only people allowed to be referenced in a crossword puzzle are "nice" people -- i.e., people whose politics and/or ideas "we" agree with (which, of course, depends entirely on who "we" are).
Good for you (I wish we knew your name). Our defense (and financial support) of Israel is now a worldwide political handicap. Don't be afraid to say so.
When you play a game on your phone and pay real money to buy perks (or special currency) in the game, you make an IN APP purchase.
I know that OFL gave it 3.5 stars . . . but this one didn't speak to me. (BTW - I miss Nancy's comments here.)
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