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End of a redundant legal doublet / SUN 6-14-26 / Fireball-throwing demons from Doom / Female-friendly fandom event / Asian rice porridge / Tom ___, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" satirist / Viola score symbol / Fast food chain whose name has two hyphens / Sam who putted croquet style until the U.S.G.A. banned it / 2023 Nobel-winning physicist L'Huillier / What a modest play has in common withe the answer to each italicized clue? / Jam band with a Ben & Jerry's flavor / Appropriately misspelled genre for Korn and Limp Bizkit
Sunday, June 14, 2026
Constructor: John Kugelman
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- SOPH POOH-POOHS POSH SHOP (22A: 10th grader critiques swanky boutique?)
- REEVES REVERES SERVERS (34A: Why Keanu is such a generous tipper?)
- MAMA CASS SCAMS CMAS (52A: 1960s singer swindles Nashville awards?)
- NESSIE SEEN IN SEINE (77A: Scottish cryptid spotted by the French?)
- DERRIERE RIDER DERIDED (94A: Harsh taskmaster taken to task?)
Unalive is a euphemistic way to say “kill” or “die.” [...] Use of unalive to mean “kill” or “die” arose on video-focused social media platforms (such as TikTok) by content creators and commenters to avoid having their videos or comments flagged/removed for violent or inappropriate content. [...] Unalive is an example of euphemism, the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant. It often used to enable discussion of sensitive or serious topics (such as suicide) on social media without risking content removal or punitive consequences from social media moderators or algorithms. Unalive is used as a verb, with all of the regular tenses and participles: unalived, unaliving, unalives. Unalived is also used as an adjective meaning dead. (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
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| [4 characters] [l'enfer, c'est ce mot-croisé] |
Somehow the fill managed to be nearly as irksome as the theme, but for completely different reasons. The desperation sweat on this one ... the "look-at-me" chasing after the "original" or the "new" ... it grew wearisome. "HA HA, YEAH" is just a long version of "AH, OK," i.e. a bunch of words one might say trying to pass itself off as a tight and bright colloquial phrase. MADE A TRY basically describes itself, i.e. the answer MADE A TRY at being interesting and failed. The very idea of a GEEK GIRL CON was off-putting, not because geek girls are off-putting (my own kid is at least adjacent to that category), but because the the very idea that such a thing is necessary is kind of horrible (67D: Female-friendly fandom event). Admittedly, nerd cons and geek cons and fandom-type things in general have never held much appeal for me, but the idea that such events are not "female-friendly" just makes me think of sweaty sexist nerds, and on Sunday, or any day, I'd rather not. NASATV???? MEGAOHM??? Oy. I have "please stop" written in the margins of my grid print-out. And also next to UNALIVED, which I hate more for its clue than anything else (57A: Online euphemism for "killed" used to avoid demonitization). "Demonetization???" That's such a weird and highly specific thing to say. I think "banned" or "deplatformed" is much more common. "Demonetization" applies only to those actually making money from social media, which as a percentage of users is hardly anyone. I stared at "demonetization" wondering if I was hallucinating. "Does it say 'demonization?'" Also, what a stupid idea: that using a euphemism is ok but using an ordinary word isn't. I guess when algorithms rule the world, this is what we get. But srsly, have the algorithms not learned the word "UNALIVED" by now? Ugh now I'm thinking about algorithms, which is, again, not something I want to be doing on a Sunday, or ever.
TWERE EWER ETRE ... there's an appropriate clusterf*ck! A bunch of ugly terms that only use four letters, all wadded together. I don't know what it was about the cluing today, but it felt hardish throughout, which would be ok if the results had at any point been rewarding. TRUE FACT is not rewarding (sidenote: why isn't "redundant" a part of that clue, but it is a part of the DESIST clue!?) (31D: End of a redundant legal doublet) (lol "doublet," again, please stop, no one calls a ___ & ___ phrase a "doublet"). When's the last time anyone put a single "tune" in a CD TRAY (92D: It can carry a tune)? The tray carries the CD. The CD carries the tune(s). This is what I mean about the puzzle trying way, way too hard. OK, the puzzle has EATEN AT (oof) me enough, time to wrap things up.
Bullets:
- 20A: Asian rice porridge (CONGEE) — a fine answer, I just can't believe I forgot it. I also forgot LEHRER (10D: Tom ___, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" satirist). I did, however, remember EGO Nwodim (whom I'd just seen in a different puzzle I did yesterday) (9D: "S.N.L." alum Nwodim). I can see how that little patch up top might give solvers trouble. EGO Nwodim has a podcast called "Thanks Dad" where she talks with other comics and comic actors, somewhat about dad stuff, but mostly just about stuff. I've listened to it a bit, it's pretty enjoyable (and appropriate to the season) (is Father's Day this weekend or next? You can see how much it matters to me lol).
- 29A: "Hoo mama, that's hot!" ("YOWIE!") — somehow the puzzle shouting "Hoo mama!" is giving me the ick. Also, so disappointed this was merely "YOWIE"! and not the much more appealing "YOWZA!"
- 44A: Bad thing to bring to bed, it's said (PHONE) — I guess. Everyone (not you, of course, but everyone else) brings their phone to bed, or at least keeps it by their bedside, even those who don't use it extensively before bed [waves hand]. This clue's kind of dumb. "It's said" is too vague for something this un-ADAGE-y.
- 71A: Actress ___ Lee Nolin of "Baywatch" (GENA) — crossing her with ANNE (63D: 2023 Nobel-winning physicist L'Huillier) made for a slightly scary moment for me, but I sorta remember GENA Lee Nolin (though I probably would've spelled it JENNA), and anyway, the only letter that makes any sense at that cross is the "N." Speaking of "anyway," "ANYHOW..." was yet another letdown, as that answer should've been "ANYHOO..." (121A: "Moving right along ...") or, if not, "ANYWAY."
- 91A: 1998 tech debut (IMAC) — I tried IPOD. I think I was a few years early on that one (yep, three years early).
- 99A: Alien leader? (XENO-) — it's a prefix meaning "alien." I hope at least one other person wrote in XENA here. Was she an alien? I know she was a warrior princess, but I briefly thought that maybe she was from ... somewhere.
- 114D: Band with the 1980s multi-octave "Take On Me" (A-HA) — again, I have no idea what the clues are on about today. I know this song like the back of my hand but I would never have used the term "multi-octave" (???). Lots of songs are "multi-octave," aren't they? I mean, dude uses his falsetto on that one note at the end of the chorus, but ... range is not what I would call a defining element of the song.
- 18D: Fireball-throwing demons from Doom (IMPS) — no idea. Doom the video game? Apparently, yes, Doom the video game. Never played it. Know nothing about it. ANYHOW ... (see how that doesn't really work as a transition!)
- 24D: Jam band with a Ben & Jerry's flavor (PHISH) — like the NU METAL of Korn and Limp Bizkit ... not my thing (116A: Appropriately misspelled genre for Korn and Limp Bizkit). I was never high enough for jam bands (which is to say I was never high ... pot made me paranoid so I noped out early and have never given it a second chance) (sleep gummies, OTOH ...).
- 39D: Altitude sickness side effect (EDEMA) — yikes. I've been around people who had altitude sickness (when I vacationed in Breckenridge, CO), but nobody got EDEMA!
- Sam who putted croquet style until the U.S.G.A. banned it (SNEAD) — OK, this is trivia I enjoy. Funny fact, considering his nickname was "Slammin' Sammy SNEAD."
OK, that's enough. See you next time.
P.S. good luck to everyone competing at the Westwords crossword tournament today in Berkeley!
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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156 comments:
Well, the puzzle had me at LEHRER, wordplayer extraordinaire. Here. Here’s a snippet from “Vatican Rag”:
Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original.
And, BTW, he did something quite rare and wonderful. He released all of his songs to the public domain. That is, he relinquished all his rights and gave the public blanket permission to use his music.
If I wanted a cryptic I would have done the cryptic. I hate cryptics. EATEN AT?? Rex was too nice.
I never ever saw the Northern lights
I never really heard of cluster flies
This puzzle did something I would have thought impossible: It made last Sunday’s beast seem like fun by comparison.
webwinger
We’ve had puzzles where the theme answer is comprised of three five letter words and each is an anagram of the other two. That is kind of clever. But this one just used a mishmash of similar letters with no real pattern. Didn’t like it either.
Sometimes I like silly, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes its out-of-the-box-ness charms me. Other times, it simply makes me cringe. The goofiness in the box today fully charmed me.
I like that the theme employed two types of wordplay. One was the silliness caused by manipulation – coming up with long complete sentences using only four letters. The other was the punning of “characters” in the revealer.
The first type made me go “Hah!” The second made me go, “Good one!”
So, I was entertained. But my brain was happy for another reason. It had hills – no-knows and tricky cluing – to conquer. A Kugelman Sunday often does this.
Thus, you doubled my pleasure, John. And please, just keep on doing what you do, as I love your bonkers voice. Thank you!
I don’t post here often and my comments are usually positive. It takes a lot for me to leave a negative comment. This puzzle felt like an unpleasant chore, like getting my teeth cleaned or having that puff of air shot into my eye at the optometrist’s.
That being said:
Bing bong the Knicks did it!!!!!
Easy-Medium. The puzzle seemed to stretch for obscurities to enhance the difficulty with only partial success. When I finished I said, "Is that all there is?"
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
I had rando for the face in the crowd at 35D (and considered waldo), but it turned out to be an EXTRA.
At 107A, my innocent sort was a naif before it was a bAbe before it was a LAMB.
HooRAY before HURRAY for "Woo-hoo" at 117A.
My 105D shade in the desert was a palm before it was ECRU.
WOEs:
The Asian rice porridge CONGEE at 20A. Needed every cross. Luckily, the crosses came easily.
Rapper Kool Moe DEE at 45A. If a three-letter rapper isn't Nas I don't know them.
The euphemism UNALIVED at 57A, easily inferred from crosses.
2023 Nobelist ANNE L'Huillier at 63D.
What the heck is a GEEK GIRL CON at 67D?
Baywatch actress GENA Lee NOLIN (71A).
The martial art AIKIDO at 72D.
I resisted DUELS at 7A because I thought they stereotypically take place at dawn and showdowns at noon.
I didn't like the 98A clue. I'm OLD but I'm not totally played out. Partially, maybe.
Yay Knicks.🎈🎈🎊🎊The puzzle? No comment. I don’t want Rex to ban me from the blog. No 🎈for me.
DNF because tOPHIT crossed with tBS makes as much sense as POPHIT crossed with PBS. The cluing worked hard to be clever but was, in fact, irritating
Agreed. Just a tedious, unpleasant, unrewarding time-wasting slog. . I find it difficult to believe that the editor would allow such a dreadful excuse of a NYT Sunday to be published. Surely there were better options. Do your job or retire, please.
Surely XENU is the better answer
I actually slogged through and finished it, even found and corrected NUMErAL to NUMETAL, but for the life of me, I don’t know why I bothered.
I actually enjoyed the silliness but agree there were clunky parts to this puzzle. While I caught onto the theme early, I thought at first all subsequent words would be anagrams of the first... And it was close with the 34A/Keanu answer but not quite. Had each word in each themer been an anagram of one another, *that* would've been a feat.
More random thoughts:
- 44A ("Bad thing to bring to bed, it's said"): Funny this appears this week, as an article in the NYT about this also just appeared in the Well column on June 6.
- 60A ("Part between the shoulders") and 105D ("Shade in the desert"): Enjoyed the cluing.
- 104A: Had YENS there at first, held me up for a bit.
- 105A: Not a fan. Is French Hamlet a thing? Could it be Latin? German? Swahili? "Oh please", SPAREME.
- 55D: There's some old (medical?) joke, for which the punch line is "Abscess makes the fart go 'Honda'..."
Congrats to the New York Knicks!!
Just. Awful. A huge slog for so little return. Hated this with every fiber of my being.
Rex, thank you for spelling ANYHOO correctly! And that’s what I had in there at first also.
Totally with you on trashing this one today. A grisly start to a Sunday…
I’d swear I’ve done this puzzle before. All ghe theme answers gave me wicked deja vu!
Debbie Downer!
I’d swear I’ve done this puzzle before. All the theme answers gave me deja vu, and there were a few like SNEAD that I should not have known, but somehow did!??!
Couldn't disagree more with OFL. Loved this puzzle for the silly but creative theme and the cleverly clued fill. Medium challenging for me. But I kept looking forward to the next line. Great start to the Sunday, thanks John!
Hey All !
Couple of tough crosses gave me a FWE today. Had MAMA CASS SCAMming the AMAS instead of the CMAS, which got me the well-known CALEF musical symbol. No idea on CONGEE, so threw in COWWEE, figuring at least EWO was a name I've heard before. And let's not forget the GEEK GILLCON. Think I was thinking JILLCON, or some other improbable thing.TWELE, who knows in poetry?
There were some others, but I've forgotten, or it's too boring ANYHOW.
Liked the idea. Tough to think up appropriate phrases using only four letters. Was trying something with ROO to mean I failed the puz, only came up with POOR ROO. I need a fourth letter, but the ole brain is not helping.
Took longer than normal to complete today. It happens. Tougher side for me.
Hope y'all have a great Sunday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Hard. Actually, the word is painful. Rex did a good job (he MADE A TRY, ANYHOW) tallying the irksome elements. There were so many.
(Actually, I say/write ANYHOW all the time. "Anyhoo" on the other hand... strong aversion to that. That sort of cutesiness ain't my jam, as TWERE.)
TRUE FACT doesn't ring TRUE to me. Redundant, yes, and that's probably the issue. "TRUE story" is what wants to go there.
DERRIERE RIDER -- HA HA, YEAH, talk about cutesy. It's not a phrase though, and I think you're trying to being a smart-ass. MADE A TRY, that is.
The revealer was maybe the best thing about the puzzle. I think I'll stop there. Rex reviews the puzzle so you don't have to.
Spot on write up today, Rex. Hard to remember a worse puzzle. After 10 minutes, I just gave up. Too unpleasant to bother continuing.
"Hoo Mama" was a clue, and "Mama Cass" was an answer. Doesn't that violate some crossword cluing rule? Confused.
The theme answers all gave the vibe of British tabloid headlines, and maybe if it had leaned into that angle, it would have been more enjoyable.
Hated the puzzle; loved the write-up. Agree with everything Rex said. Two self-inflected woes added to my pain:
- Didn’t know the Sonata maker, and assumed the fireball throwers were from (Mt) Doom, so I had ORCS at 18D, which completely locked me out of that corner for a while;
- At 116A, since the clue said the genre for Korn and Limp Biskit was “appropriately” misspelled, I figured the answer had to have a “K” in it. KrapRap?
Drudgery
Hated this puzzle!
Ugh
A perfect example of why you shouldn’t necessarily do something simply because you can…
If it is try play’n it safer
Drink the wine and chew the wafer
Two four six eight
Time to transubstantiate
Brilliant wordsmith.
I swear I’ve seen this comment before.
Rex summarized this one much more eloquently than I could have, and I agree that it is beyond terrible and well into horrific territory. The theme is an absolute waste of grid space, and super tedious and UNFUN. All for what ?
In addition to wasting our time with a useless theme, we are also treated to nonsense like HA HA YEAH crossing YOWIE. Or, how about an actress from Baywatch crossing a physicist ? We could live with UNALIVED as a sign of the times, but do you really have to hit us with NUMETAL and GEEK GIRL CON ?
This thing fails on so many levels. I don’t know if Rex would give out zero stars, but that extra half a star was basically a gift. There haven’t been many that have been worse than this one.
Stayed up after walking the track & found this. Sometimes I go back to sleep after my walk but not this time. Another Sunday I was looking forward to. And very disappointed. I'm glad I lost my streak last Sunday.
What's going on at the NYT?
ANYHOW is just straight-up wrong.
Another Sunday slog. I had a couple of misspells but by the time I was done I just didn't care.
I don't know if this happened for anyone else, but a few days ago the NYT reorganized the app so the crossword is down near the bottom. I thought that was insane, because it should be the marquee of all the games. But now I assume they've just given up, they don't care about it, they put in no effort and don't actually want anyone to play it. That's the only explanation for putting out this completely irredeemable, wildly unpleasant, insult of a puzzle. 1.5 stars is crazy generous, I would've given it -5. I don't think I've ever had less enjoyment from a puzzle. Awful, awful, awful.
Look it up! It can be used interchangeably with "anyway".
Just awful. I'm surprised this was even considered. Who enjoys this? From the comments, not many. Blech.
I think Rex is being generous with 1.5 stars. I’ve been doing puzzles, especially Sundays, since the 70s, and this one makes me want to stop. I hope the constructor had fun making this, but I did not enjoy solving it.
My least favorite puzzle theme is the “nonsense phrase clued wackily.” I feel like 2/3rds of NYT Sundays fall into that same category. They are never funny, never worth the time, always essentially a bunch of disconnected tiny themelesses made up entirely of short crosswordese fill, with these largely ungettable theme entries as barriers between them. Give me rebesus and architectural gimmicks til the cows come home, but stop with thinking nonsense phrases are funny or clever.
32 minutes for me, so on the tough side of medium. Liked it more than @REX did but I think that's true most of the time... I just like doing crosswords! The themers got better on the way down....The idea of NESSIE swimming in the SEINE is fun; parsing the one about derrieres was the hardest--had something like dearie derides derider first. Had no clue about EGO's name, so I had CONjEE and EjO first, no happy music, had to look around to find my mistake. Thanks, John, for a quirky puzzle!
Saw Kugelman's name as the constructor and knew I'd hate this puzzle. Confirmation bias confirmed.
Yes KNICKS!!
Hard disagree with RP on the AHA clue. The song goes from a bass A2 through all vocal ranges up to the E5 in falsetto (2.6 octaves). Considering how many pop songs don't even cover one octave these days, this song is extraordinary for this specific reason. Hard to think of any other vocal music with this range: Tuvan throat singing, heavy metal going from growl to screaming falsetto? Even opera doesn't use this kind of range in the same singer very often, maybe some mezzos?
Did you hear that a New York tabloid paper has chosen to forego headlines in the future. They announced it in their final one: POSTOPTSTOSTOPTOPSPOTS.
Nervous agreement by a sailor to open his mouth for the dentist: HAH AYE AH
I'm very excited to know about UNALIVE. Some of my best friends are still UNALIVEheads, rockin' out to the Grateful UNALIVE. They usually eschew maps, preferring UNALIVE reckoning. Lots of these UNALIVEbeats don't seem to realize that Jerry Garcia (or Cherry Garcia if you're a PHISH fan) is UNALIVER than a doornail. But I don't want to beat an UNALIVE horse, so I'll bring this comment to an UNALIVE stop.
I'm always a fan of different, even while acknowledging the slogginess of this one. I still liked it, so thanks, John Kugelman.
My thoughts exactly :(
Agree 100%. Horrible cluing, horrible puzzle, horrible experience.
I actually really enjoyed the theme, and being able to put those answers together quickly in my head helped me forge through the unenjoyable slog that was the rest of the puzzle. But again, I liked the theme! It's hard to make 21-letter answers out of a bank of 4 letters, and they were generally funny!
And even ANYHOO.
There was a puzzle recently where one clue used "tbsp" and the VERY NEXT ANSWER was "TBSP". I've never seen something so glaringly bad in a Times XW, and it was in a puzzle I otherwise liked!
The cluing for those answers in particular was not at all trying to be clever. This puzzle had many foibles, but that one is on you, Rick.
Don’t often comment…but what a slog. Painful fill…obtuse clues. EATEN AT??…MAKE A TRY???? YOWEE…
1 and a half stars is way too generous - zero would be more appropriate - this puzzle sucked!
The phrase "Viewers Like You" is specific to PBS. But I agree about the cluing.
Chess Pieces = Men? The Queen is not a man. The Rook is a turret…
When you can clue a common French word as a line spoken by a Danish prince in an English play, you just have to do it.
In a word: HAHANAH
Cultural references are obviously a crap shoot, what one has read/overheard/come across up to now in life. But the clues to be figured out are the fun ones, for me. I know all about congee, Tom Lehrer, and enjoy the trivia I know.
Meanwhile, I had fun with the themers, seeing which of the four letters fit where. When it's a known idiom, there's more Aha. For me this was kind of more fun bc there wasn't that confirmation; it just had to make grammatical sense as a tongue-twisteresque alliteration.
The other "figure this one out" - ANYWAAH - leave me wondering if anyone got them when the clues are inexact and the answers are like WAHHOOOEEYAHRAY!
Edema can be an effect of altitude but is not the same cohort as people who barf. We always traveled with a barf sarong (far more multipurpose than a towel) for my kid; my old sports injuries might swell; my dad would take an aspirin to avert clots - kind of almost unrelated symptoms of altitude, not SEs of one another.
For the record, I was also up at six today, like allayall early posters. But it's out of order for me to do the puzzles before all the other morning things so maybe my notes at this late hour should start, Dear Diary :-/
I do like the analysis and clever commentary here as much as the puzzles themselves, thx for the smiles. Xo Mellë
This puzzle was about as entertaining as watching paint dry; oil based paint. “Reran?” “Eatenat?” Another example of an author trying to be just too cute.
I almost always enjoy Sunday puzzles, but I agree with Rex and Southside Johnny today; this was just a terrible slog and put me in a bad mood, which is the opposite of what a Sunday puzzle should do.. The fill was in general so awful that there was absolutely no joy, no whoosh, no elegance. GEEKGIRLCOM is terrible; I can't believe the editors left it in. Just bad, bad, bad.
I get as in, AVE maria gee it's good to see ya, but what does senatorial have to do with it?
Rex, for the "opposite of charm," Harold in "The Boys in the Band" said (of Michael): "You don't have charm, Michael. You have counter-charm."
Also, are you confusing edema with aneurysm? The former is a term for swelling. So I think you don't have "an edema," you have edema. Maybe some of our docs can chime in on that. Anyhoo, now back to the usual nonsense.
How to keep the sesame seeds from falling off your bagel: SESAME PASTE
Brutus: Love the new toga, Julie! What would you call that color?
Caesar: ECRU, Brutè.
Brutus: Well, it's gorgeous. I hope it doesn't get all bloody tomorrow. Oops! Forget I said that!!
Musical Brian's former spouse: XENO
The singular opera star Beverly: SILL
Best thing to do after cerning poorly: DISCERN
Adam and Eve: GENA
Re: SODA. Where did Dr. Pepper go to med school? University of Minnesoda. (My g'daughter and I made that one up when she was little. Almost 17 now. Ouch.)
Took a while to see the only-four-letters gimmick but that made getting the other themers --I was going to say "easier" but "possible" is probably at better word. Strangely enough I had about three letters of the revealer and wrote in SMALLCASTOFCSHARACTERS.
Some unfamiliar names, per usual. Worse were the unknowns that involved unlikely letter combinations like IMPROVCOMIC and GEEKGIRLCON. Then there were a couple of "that has to be rights" like MEGAOHM and UNALIVED (really??). Finally finished in the SW with the rat's nest of EWER (my washstand hasn't had one for a while) crossing TWERE and "modern art", which is actually a good clue but was hard for me to see. Had ANDNOW for ANYHOW and my N in NOW looked enough like an H to make that hard to fix.
NUMETAL sort of makes sense but I left it blank with no idea about LTD so technical DNF but by then I was past caring.
Best Sunday ever, JK. Har, Just Kidding. The Fun Meter barely registered for me, but impressive construction at least.
In-deed
Close to a PR for me for longest solve time (1:47) and only stayed at it to keep my streak. Deeply un-fun. At least feels validating that this was a shared feeling!
You’re kidding, right?
Sen. Mitch McConnell is well-known for greeting his colleagues with "AVE." It caught on when he was the majority leader and almost all of them do now.
It's Pride Month. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I like crosswords, the SB, and playing Scrabble. Of these three the one that sets the bar for what is acceptable the lowest is by far the crosswords. Sunday puzzles are in a category unto themselves in this regard. Today's offering was a perfect case. It was like the editor is saying " See that 21x21 porta-potty over there? I just filled it to the brim. You have to clean it out. Here's your spoon. " Where else would you encounter a term as malodorous as UNALIVED? Based on its clue I couldn't be sure if "demonetization" is referring to money or demons. The only good thing about it is I'll probably never see it again.
Playing the SB Im accustomed to making up words from 7 letters. This only uses 4 so in that regard the theme answers came easily and it helped with the tortured fill. Still there were a few spots that I feared would be dnfs. I finished at TWERE crossing EWER and that was as close as it came.
Finishing cleanly I felt like Tim Robbins in the " Shawshank Redemption. " Specifically that scene where he comes out of the sewer pipe and the rain washes him clean.
I guess I'm a minority voice here...I thought the theme was imaginative, and it helped the solve. That said, it took forever, and I needed several look-ups in the NE, which I found hard.
Certainly one of the Top Ten worst puzzles ever to appear in the NYT!
You can do whatever you want if
First you clear it with the Pontiff
Ave Maria
Gee it’s good to see ya
Memorized his two albums as a tween in the early 70s (my parents had them) and still love his brilliant work.
I do think "legal doublet" is what those two-word redundant legal phrases are called (i.e., "cease and desist," "aid and abet," "terms and conditions," "ways and means," etc.). I think the idea is that the idea was to include both the English and French words for something, from the days when English law was carried out in French.
En fin, sigamos adelante.
Well, before we go looking for the good stuff, lemme say, "HAHAYEAH Lordy-be!" I disliked this monstrosity. Meaningless marquee phrases I didn't find amusing with weird letteral constraints that do nothing for the solver and results in a geyser of iffy fill and half-baked ideas jam packed with products and people clued in a cringefest of UGH.
Completed this during the Knicks win and the inevitable "one for the ages" nonsense those basketball boys always say at the end of every championship. It's been fun to see the street parties in New York.
Now let's see what we've got on the good side:
I live in the southwest, and we still have high noon duels here. It's mostly because everyone is soo hot and owns a gun and a cowboy hat so what're ya gonna do to pass the time? We call them drive-by shootings here, but the concept of "high noon face-off" is the same. Actually, now that I think about it, High Noon Face Off should be the name of a spa treatment.
I live in the desert. There are many ways to describe the desert. ECRU is not one of them.
Not only do we get the greatest scientist of all time, but acknowledge his hugeness and I won't even mention there might be a Wikipedia entry for Georg. Let's just celebrate his holy MEGAOHMNESS.
❤️ Tee shirt cannons. Make-up artist. BRIO.
😫 CONGEE. YOWIE vs WOWIE. DDT as a wrestling move. UNALIVED. RESURGE. TRUE FACT. PEPE. EGO. L'Huillier. URI. MADE A TRY. CD TRAY.
People: 15
Places: 3
Products: 17
Partials: 10
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 48 of 134 (36%)
Funny Factor: 6 😐
Tee-Hee: DERRIERE. DOPE. Bring a PHONE to bed.
Uniclues:
1 The perpetual drunkard's desire.
2 Carnival worker awkwardly explains why the coaster flew off the tracks to the police inspector.
3 Comedian makes telephone jokes while pouring salad dressing over herself.
4 What a bong is for.
5 Negative review of a cosplay outfit that doesn't make you look like an alien sex worker.
1 SPARE ME STOUT ANYHOW
2 HAHA YEAH LOOSE ROLLER
3 LTE IMPROV COMIC IN OIL (~)
4 DEEP BREATHS DOPE EVAC (~)
5 GEEKGIRLCON DRESS UGH (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Take a role in a ground-breaking silent musical. ACT IN "AIR GUITAR".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
FYI GeekGirlCon is a real thing. It’s been an annual event in Seattle (where I live) since 2011.
@11:02 Liveprof: Ha ha
Even using my random solve today wasn't enough to lift the puzzle above a slog. There were so many things I didn't know and the randomizer kept going to them and I would have to hit the tab key yet again to try to find another foothold. The theme answers ended up being the most interesting thing in the puzzle. NESSIE must have been pretty tired after swimming to France.
DNF at the QB Ward or Newton and Rory's school because I had a SMALL teST OF CHARACTERS. By that point, I had seen the clues to nearly every answer so many times that I quit reading them; reading the clue may have helped me avoid the DNF because of the "modest play" in the clue. I can't bring myself to care much.
Sure, some of the mess was my own fault, having n__B for newb or noob at 107A, ELO before A-HA (even though I knew the song), TRUE thaT. But the best one was cUt, for "Shout in a slasher film". I thought it was ironic but wondered if the clue needed to indicate it was on the film set. RESURGE set me straight.
@Liverprof:
I had meant to comment earlier on EDEMA. Yes, "edema" typically refers to swelling, like of the lower leg (with heart failure) or eyelids or tongue (with an allergic reaction). With altitude sickness, one may experience specifically *pulmonary* edema, which is quite different from "just" EDEMA-- pulmonary edema is fluid in the lungs. So IMO, EDEMA does not quite ring right here.
My least favorite Sunday. Ever. “Soph pooh pooh. . .”, etc.: what happens when a constructor’s pat-myself-on-the-back gimmickry is so enamored of wordplay, he and the editor seem to forget there are actual solvers out there.
>About as unpleasant a Sunday experience as I can ever remember having....
You got it. In the thick of the competition for WOAT.
Absolutely the worst in living memory.
The constructor may be suffering from turret syndrome.
Tough Sunday for me. I definitely needed the theme to finish.
I agree this was kinda sloggy but I liked it more than @Rex did.
All too many brand names in the NYTXW of late. Today was exceptionally bad. I really don't want to be bombarded with OSTER ORAL-B YSL HYUNDAI LEXUS K-MART IMAC NASA--TV CMAs IN-N-OUT on a Sunday morning!
By all means, make me guess the names of female physicists who aren't Marie Curie. But not this!
The theme was my favorite part of this puzzle, but I have a soft spot for anagrams and I admit this kind of wordplay isn’t what you expect from a crossword. But once I figured out REEVES REVERES SERVERS, I could quickly figure out the others (except I thought MAMA CASS had scammed the AMAS for far too long). Overall I still agree with the rating because the rest was a slog. A lot of it felt tortured. The ANNE/GENA cross nearly took me out, and I had thought the golfer was “SNEED” until I noticed my error at the very end after the puzzle was totally filled (but wrong, obviously). YOWIE and BOO from me.
“I do love this theme,” Kugelman says of his own theme in today’s disastrous puzzle. He imagines “a lot of ‘what the hell?’ comments from solvers” in response to the puzzle’s “silliness,” denying the very many other reasons solvers will have for commenting “what the hell” when doing this regrettable crossword puzzle.
You should make a try at root planing
GEEK GIRL CON... was this in the constructor's wordlist, or did he know the phrase and somehow realize that it fits the pattern --E--I--C-- ? Granted, an answer crossing THREE themers is very restrictive. I use Ingrid for my amateur constructions, and it gave me only two options: SPENDING CAP (an answer that joins the boring 11-letter answer club alongside ASSESSMENTS) and CHESHIRE CAT (now that's a fun one!).
Non-American here. I've seen tons of clues for SSN(S) but I don't recall any clues calling them "old" IDs. Can anyone explain?
The puztheme idea is kinda OK, but its joke wears pretty thin, when it's SunPuz-sized. Better to put it in, at most, a weekday-sized puz. Or better yet, just splatz it into a runt-sized puz ... to mini-mize the sufferin, if U will.
Least-surprisin debut answers: HAHAYEAH. UNALIVED. HORSIE. GEEKGIRLCON.
Most-surprisin non-debuts: NUMETAL. TRUEFACT.
staff weeject pick: UGH. In honor of all the less-than-glowin Comment Gallery reviews, today. har
Thanx for the not-limited-enough runs, Mr. Kugelman dude. Nice try, but I'm sure you'll have better luck next horsie rodeo.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
p.s.
Impossible Runt puzzle? [The test solvers thought so]:
**gruntz**
M&A
I'd like to start by saying something positive: I really liked O CANADA, and learning that there is a trilingual version with Inuktitut.
Aside from that, weak puzzle for all the reasons Rex and the rest of you give. The theme is just awful.
There were quite a few short names that were total Unknowns: PEPE EGO DEMI DEE GENA ANNE CAM.
As for taking your PHONE to bed... for many years I have slept with it, my wallet, and my keys right beside me. I started doing that when my boss had his home broken into -- while everyone was asleep -- and he lost all of those. He had to get all new cards, change all the locks in the house and the cars, etc, etc... Yikes!
Totally agree with everything you and Rex said; hated it, gave up halfway through. And I drive a Hyundai Ioniq5, so shame on me for not knowing who makes the Sonata. Also wanted Orcs; had Wowie instead of YOWIE. As to all the rest, Boo and Hiss.
It's puzzles like these that make me wonder whether the NY Times crossword is played out, as it were. From the veteran solver perspective, we've seen tired puzzle after tired puzzle (Lewis' silver linings notwithstanding) and clearly the Shortz era has lost steam and creative energy. Of course, Games are booming and they support the NYT, so I doubt anything changes. Anyway, sad day for crossword lovers.
I have never hated a puzzle more than this. I don’t even know where to begin.
Me too. I usually like Sunday puzzles because you can kind of relax, take your time, no urgency to get it done quick. But today, in particular, and several of the recent Sundays have just been a slog.
"About as unpleasant a Sunday experience as I can ever remember having..." Came here to say exactly this and to see if I was wrong. Feeling validated.
Oof! Boring, frustrating, utterly unrewarding. What a way to end the week.
Firstly, let me say that I liked the revealer. I probably only had 2 or 3 letters installed when I popped in SMALL CAST OF CHARACTERS. Other than that, it was for me, as for many of you, a brutal slog. The only reason I finished it was that I was half way through and it was only 10:30 pm and I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed. So worked my way to the bottom and got the “you’re an idiot, keep trying” message. So not only did I have to suffer the solve, I had to suffer the discouraging task of scanning a 21 x 21 grid for what usually turns out to be a typo.
But this time it wasn’t just clumsy fingers at fault. I actually had ANNa crossing PaKOE in the centre of the puzzle. I’m not up on my Nobel physicists or my Javan teas, but easily fixed. After the music I looked up some tea info and found that Java produces about 1 to 2 percent of the world’s tea and I don’t really associate them with that. When you say you’re having a cup of Java, you don’t mean tea, you mean coffee. That’s because the island produces about 6% of the world’s coffee. So why clue PEKOE as Javanese? Why not Assam or Sri Lanka? Strangely, I was drinking a cup of Sri Lankan orange pekoe while making this dumb mistake.
Further tea trivia: I’m an occasional tea drinker, and a newbie, at that. So I was surprised to discover that PEKOE is not a type of tea bush but, rather, a grade of tea determined by the method of picking (correct combination of leaves of a certain size and buds). The shrub that produces the leaves is just good old Camellia sinensis, the same one that offer itself up for all black and green teas.
And I liked finding out why there is an orange variety when, obviously, the plants are green. And there is no orange flavour present. The name might refer to the colour of the leaves when oxidized, or even the colour of the brewed tea, but I like this explanation better:
The Dutch House of Orange-Nassau, the royal family since 1815, had long been the most respected aristocratic family of the Dutch Republic. The Dutch East India Company played a central role in bringing tea to Europe and may have marketed the tea[when?] as "orange" to suggest association with the House of Orange. (Wikipedia)
So, a terrible slog but a fun bit of research, so that’s okay.
Names, brand names, and/or pop culture trivia everywhere . . . and what the hell is a "4G letter"?
I also say ANYHOW, but more often "anyway". Never "anyhoo". I don't do cutesie well.
. . . and also -- Have we really reached the point where having access to menus from half a dozen restaurants written in foreign languages is necessary for solving a crossword puzzle ostensibly written in English??
TBS isn't supported by viewers but by advertisers.
as a rule working the Sunday puzzle in the morning is a pleasant experience. Sadly, this was the exact opposite!
Absolutely nothing to like about this puzzle - an unpleasant slog with little reward. And, I'm not generally harsh about the NYT puzzles!
Thought this was above average for a Sunday; that's not a high bar but this was fun. Some weak fill (EATENAT), inevitable in a Sunday, but the themers were zany and cute and let me rip across twenty-letters of puzzle every time. Lots of nice cluing (had "palm" like a putz for "shade in the desert") and a cultural ambit from AVA Gardner to NUMETAL to UNALIVE. More of OP's complaints seem weirdly subjective today than usual (like, okay, YOU don't hear ANYHOW, but I do), though obviously a lot of people agree. May be a generational thing. Rex stays pretty current but then once in a while he goes on a rant that, for instance, makes it pretty clear he doesn't know how demonitization works. And I'd assume the same of most of the gentry here. Anyhow, puzzle scratched my little greys good.
I loved it. I thought the anagrams were really clever and wacky-funny.
Roman senators would have used Latin to greet each other.
Soooo.... Keanu and Dogstar in the same puzzle....
This was an unpleasant puzzle indeed. The best thing I can say about it is that it didn’t take too long.
My only nit to pick with OFL: “Take On Me” does have a notoriously challenging range, even before you hit the falsetto. There are some weird intervals there too. Not a good karaoke pick for most singers.
This is my first time commenting on a puzzle but this puzzle was so awful I couldn’t let it pass without saying something.
A bit on the slow side today, at 91 percent of my average.
The theme was...ok by me. I wasn't wowed by it, but I wasn't turned off by it either. It was mostly in the background, except when it gave me letters in runs, heh heh, because I caught onto the idea fairly early on.
I liked learning that O CANADA has Inuktitut lyrics, though I never hear them at the hockey games. I'm not particularly fond of the redundant TRUE FACT (it certainly bugs me more than "cease and DESIST"). Minor dupe in RERAN and RUN, for those of you who care about that sort of thing. (Didn't notice it until just now.) Are CD TRAYS still a thing anywhere?
For some reason, my brain decided that HYUNDAI was too short for the seven-letter space it obviously occupies, so I started thinking about composers who were known for writing sonatas. BEETHOV(en)? MOZARTX? HAYDNXX? Nothing came to mind. Then I went to HMOS and YES and my brain went "Oh, my bad."
Errors: Aside from the HYUNDAI snafu, I also had KILOOHM for MEGAOHM. OSTEO for ORTHO. SCOTT for ORAL B (lol). NUMERAL for NUMETAL (because I didn't even look at the clue). HAHA SURE for HAHAYEAH. DOOF for DOPE. LYCRA for DENIM. IDIOM for ADAGE. SEARS for KMART. RACK for SILL. NAIF for LAMB. Dang, that's a lot of missteps.
Agree with Rex. Unpleasant in theme, solutions and clues.
To Anonymous, regarding SSNs: I expect it's alluding to the fact that Medicare IDs used to be SSNs, but are no longer. A few years ago, they replaced the 9-digit SSNs with 11-digit Medicare-specific IDs.
Before we worried about identity theft SSNs were used as your Medicare ID number. Now you get a unique Medicare ID.
I don't think there is a trilingual version of O Canada, no alternating language verses, rather it has versions in these 3 languages.
Probably because I’m on vacation drinking rum by a pool but I truly enjoyed the silliness of the marquis answers today. And the fill put up more of a tussle than a usual Sunday - always a plus.
Hey there @Anon 8:35
I read someone say this before, about the app rearranging the puzs. I use nyt.com to do the puzs, and they are still the same, with the Main xword, the Midi, and the Mini at the top of the page. I take it the app is a different platform or something?
Became pretty clear pretty quick that was just one big PPP slog. I trashed it, and judging from the comments here, that was the right move. A waste of space...
Once upon a time, SSNs were everyone's unique general-use ID #. Mine was in my college ID. Since the internet and its key as access to bank & and your lifelong financial record, its not used so generally. I.E. no longer as a health ins ID #, etc.
I've alfready had one student in my college Enlish Composition class who insisted on using the term "unalived" because "killed" is a "trigger" word that should not be used.
And by the way, RE: Yesterday's mini-dust-up over whether ALPHA and BETA can refer to females as well as males: Has anyone here ever tried to train a dog? Ever read the writings of Jane Goodall?
this is why it's the female-friendly con, where you're just playing an alien and not having to worry about bro thinks you're hoe just cause you're having fun with what you got and not wearing a burka
Missed your comment because I was working on an UNALIVEline and had to have everything done before noon.
I liked this better than Rex did, possibly just because it was a breeze after the theme was sussed and then over quickly. The theme is very similar to the LETTER BANKS found in some cryptic crosswords, particularly in those by Joshua Kosman and Henri PIcciotto (and as I just encountered in one I test-solved for them) for their Out of Left Field site. But a letter bank clue always explicitly states the source word, and here the “bank,” is only implied, and also does not always obey the rule of having no repetitions within it.
I've heard both ANYHOW and ANYWAY all my life. They may actually be regionalisms, but I don't think either one is more (or less) common than the other.
Duels happen at dawn. Western shootouts happen at noon.
I thought I recalled it was even earlier, inclusive of the Anglo & Saxon: a Latin/romance lang word and a Germanic one. Same idea; would be interesting to know the era: 1066 at Hastings, 1215 with Magna Carta, or with the Enlightenment
@egsforbreakfast 9:13 AM
Nice: POSTOPTSTOSTOPTOPSPOTS.
@11:02 Liveprof: Ah, thx
@Anonymous 9:40 AM
Every single friend of mine who is a queen is a man.
@Anonymous 1:00 PM:
We still have SSNs here in the USA. They used to be used as an ID number for almost everything (in the 1970s, the Minneapolis Police Department actually had a program called "Operation ID" where they lent you an engraver and you etched your SSN in the back of TV/stereo/etc., and then if they were ever stolen, they'd be easy to return to you if they were recovered; at universities, before electronic student records, professors would post class lists of exam grades or final class grades outside their office doors using SSNs instead of names; etc.).
Then, people realized that giving everyone your SSN left you open to identity fraud, so we use them much less as an ID now than we used to.
The clue specifically references Medicare (federal government medical insurance for seniors); Medicare cards (which you show when you visit a doctor) used to have SSNs as the ID, but about 10 years ago they switched to a non-SSN-based ID number due to identity fraud concerns.
@Liveprof 10:23 AM
Was getting ready to +1 your GENA, but then your granddaughter stepped up. +5.
There are no anagrams
This is exactly how I feel about our current administration.
Huge Lehrer fan here, too!! A bunch of my little catechism posse used to walk sedately down the aisle before mass whispering “Vatican Rag” until we got caught. Thought I’d be doing penance until retirement age!
While I understand what the goal, the execution just failed to come together. I worked and worked post-solve to try to force it to be more cohesive and failed miserably. I get it, but it’s just clunky. But it’s finished.
I don't think I've ever hate-solved a puzzle before. I know, no one was going to UNALIVE me if I quit, but duty drove me on.
@Teedmn, your NESSIE remark is the one bright spot of this puzzle experience. LOL!
Rex nailed it. Super annoying and irritating for exactly all the reasons he stated and then some. Silly me - I stared at my last fill-in to complete the puzzle as MADEATRY and simply could not see it as 3 words. “What the hell kind of word is ‘MAID-a-tree’?” I had to look up the answer to see it was correct. Oh! MADE A TRY!!! I guess it’s a rugby reference? Ugh. This puzzle makes you look forward to Monday!
Conrad
My thought was the Western “showdowns” as you called them are essentially duels , when they are supposed to draw their six shooters at the same time. And supposedly they often happened at high noon.
Anonymous 7:12 AM
Xenophobia fear of outsiders or foreigners. ,called aliens in US law.
The chorus of the original version of Take On Me spans two and a half octaves, more than most people can sing. It’s a vocal firework. The Weezer version only spans one and a half octaves (the first phrase just moves around one note instead of jumping up an octave).
Tom F
Old story it is not a word because it shouldn’t be a word versus millions of use it all the time, daily. so it is a word. I go with the latter opinion.
I also felt compelled to come here and moan about this awful puzzle.
Roo
Yes
Phone app vs website. I hate the app but I can lie down while doing the puzzle.
I don’t think they are discouraging finding the crossword, they just want all the crossworders to try the other puzzles Marketing 101
I came here to say just that. 2 1/2 octaves is crazy and is absolutely the most distinctive part of the song (along with the video.) If I start the chorus on my lowest note, if I even can hit the last note, it sounds like someone is torturing a chipmunk. He makes it sound relatively easy. Fireworks.
This old phart remembers when the CIA terminated someone with extreme prejudice. Yes, the guy was UNALIVED
Meme
French did not have a big impact on English until AFTER 1066. Thy English elites lost their lands and the Norman French elites took over. Except for the church ( Latin of course) all official activity was in French The common people continued to speak English but eventually French had a great impact on English. (You can get some of Chaucer but Old English is virtually incomprehensible to us ).
Okanaganer
FWIW
PEPE is not a proper name. Cacio e pepe iis a pasta dish, no more a proper name than lasagna. But practically I guess if you don’t know it, that detail doesn’t make much difference.(it is a popular item in many Italian restaurants in the (US) northeast so maybe the constructor or editor likes it.
You missed an opportunity. Jerry Garcia was not part of Phish, but - drumroll - the Grateful Unalive!
Totally agree!
Jacke
Agree with what you said.
About Rex’s review, he has said he always writes the reviews off the cuff, Rants mistakes and all. but lately, with puzzles he doesn’t like , to me he is going abit too far.
Georgia
FWIW
When the face off happens in a Western, they draw at the same time. That’s a duell
@egs -- I tried coming up with one using three letters:
(In a bit of housecleaning, The Almighty chooses between two species in the 1600s)
GOD: DOG GOOD, DODO DOODOO, DODO GO
Nicely done.
Worse than Harding?
Wilson?
Buchanonon?
In fact social security nuyare de facto IDsin the US
Precisely what oppents of them
Predicted and of course were called lunatics by those whio wanted them
@dgd, good to know, thanks. Because the grid is all uppercase I never realized PEPE wasn't a name! (In fact if I Google "cacio e pepe", it is capitalized in most of the links, but not all.) And if I google "pepe" by itself I get a soccer player (not Pele), a Mexican singer, Pepe Le Pew the cartoon skunk, etc.
One and a half stars is generous scoring. I had a root canal which was more fun. Awful puzzle.
Wow, a trivia test that I failed miserably. I kinda liked the silly themers and revealer, but the rest was not much fun. Later to the party today ‘cause first I watched the entire Knicks game this morning, a great pleasure, and then could not really get into this puzzle.
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