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"Howards End" daughter / WED 6-10-26 / Landon who ran against F.D.R. in 1936 / Cousin of a flugelhorn / Notes of appreciation, in online parlance / Motivator, of a sort / ___ House, residence for visiting dignitaries in Washington / Only player on three victorious teams in this puzzle
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Constructor: David J. Kahn and Ethan Quigley
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: WORLD CUP WINNERS (7D: Global "club" with only eight members, each of which appears in circled letters with its country code) — just like it says: the country codes for the only eight countries ever to win the World Cup can be found in the eights sets of three circled squares inside today's grid:
Theme answers:
- BRAWL (4A: Big dust-up [1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002]) 🇧🇷
- AFFRAY (18A: Big dust-up [1998, 2018]) 🇫🇷
- WAR GOD (24A: Mars, notably [1978, 1986, 2022]) 🇦🇷
- TAURUS (36A: Cinco de Mayo birth, e.g. [1930, 1950]) 🇺🇾
- GERWIG (43A: "Lady Bird" director Greta [1954, 1974, 1990, 2014]) 🇩🇪
- NARITA (50A: Japan Airlines hub [1934, 1938, 1982, 2006]) 🇮🇹
- AVENGE (61A: Get back for [1966]) 🏴
- ESPYS (69A: Awards for Shohei Ohtani and Caitlin Clark [2010]) 🇪🇸
- (bonus answer) PELE (56D: Only player on three victorious teams in this puzzle)
Alfred Mossman Landon (September 9, 1887 – October 12, 1987) was an American oilman and politician who served as the 26th governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 1936 presidential election, and was defeated in a landslide by incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The margin of victory in the electoral college was the largest of Roosevelt's four elections to the office of president, as Landon won just 8 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. Landon died on October 12, 1987, becoming the only presidential candidate from either of the major parties to live to the age of 100 until Jimmy Carter in 2024, and is to date the only Republican candidate to do so. [...] The 1936 Republican National Convention selected Landon as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. He proved to be an ineffective campaigner and carried just two states in the election, neither of which was Kansas despite him being the sitting governor of that state. After the election, he left office as governor and never sought public office again. Later in life, he supported the Marshall Plan and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. He gave the first in a series of lectures, now known as the Landon Lecture Series, at Kansas State University. Landon lived to the age of 100 and died in Topeka, Kansas, in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997. (wikipedia)
• • •
The puzzle was easy except for the north, which was also less pleasant than the rest of the grid largely because they decided to get cute with the cluing and double it up ([Big dust-up] for two clues, both in the same tiny section, both themers). The real problem is AFFRAY, a word no one uses ("fray," sure, but "AFFRAY" sounds almost Victorian). I probably wouldn't have gotten AFFRAY with any kind of clue, but somehow I resented struggling to get an answer and having to endure a doubled-up clue. There was something suffocating about it. It's trying to be cute, but it muddies things too much, esp. since you're doing your little cutesy clue-doubling thing with theme answers. You wanna play little duplicate-clue games, use the regular fill, not the themers. This tiny section included not only two themers with duplicate clues (one of which is not an everyday word), it also had two annoyingly ambiguous clues for three-letter answers. I wrote in UMP for REF (5D: One making calls, informally) and DEA for ATF (6D: Antismuggling grp.). So that whole section felt airless and fussy and ultimately not that rewarding. Who wants trouble from three-letter answers? I should add that I wrote in BLAIR at first for 4D: ___ House, residence for visiting dignitaries in Washington, but then pulled it when it ended up clashing with UMP and DEA. Which is to say that clearly I'd heard of BLAIR House, but did not trust that I had it right. Also, LUSTS is something (much) stronger than 22A: Longs (for), and TYS aren't "notes" (15D: Notes of appreciation, in online parlance). You might write "TY" in a "note" (or text) (short for "thank you"), but TYS are not themselves "notes of appreciation." They are, at best, expressions of appreciation. At worst, they're a terrible plural abbr. that you'd never use irl and should never use in your grid.
Bullets:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[2010!]
[1998!]
[1999! Not a World Cup song, but certainly a better song than the other two ... and hey, any song can be a World Cup song if you want it to be! Just put it on while you watch and bam, instant anthem!]
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Bullets:
- 34D: Motivator, of a sort (NUDGER) — what are we doing here? Come on.
- 31A: Little dust-up (SPAT) — still with the "dust-ups"?! Why?!
- 54D: "Howards End" daughter (EVIE) — this is where the puzzle gets whatever difficulty it has: in proper nouns of obscure origins. Kinda dicey to cross a two fictional women at a vowel (EVIE / MIRIAM), but I supposed that "I" was eventually inevitable (I thought maybe Mrs. Maisel was a MARIAM, but I've yet to meet or hear of an EVAE, so "I" it was!
- 50A: Japan airlines hub [1934, 1938, 1982, 2006] (NARITA) — weird to have ITALY hidden in a clue that is explicitly JAPANESE. I think it's better when the country-containing answers have nothing to do with specific countries. These are the minute aesthetic considerations I think about when I look over puzzles. This particular issue may not, in fact, be worth fretting over, but it's something that would irk me a little if this were my puzzle. But what do I know? I'm just a dog (70A: Stereotypical dog's name).
That's all. See you next time. And Happy Almost World Cup!
P.S. yesterday I learned that Ricky Martin and Shakira have both recorded official World Cup songs, but Marc Anthony has not. (Thanks, WFMU! Specifically, Tuesday Music Trivia on "Wake N Bake" with Clay Pigeon!).
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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- Westwords (Berkeley, CA, Jun. 14, 2026)
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104 comments:
The Times doubling down this week on WPOTY nominees with Sunday and today. I’ll take Nordic Combined over soccer any day. As REX highlights - the reveal here is as flat as can be.
JAZZ On The Autobahn
Overall fill goes from the oddity of things like AFFRAY and GEES to the trivial MIRIAM.
She Never Spoke Spanish To Me
Highly unenjoyable Wednesday morning solve.
Bee GEES
Timely, sure.
But sad.
Had a conversation with a colleague yesterday who told me he's going to boycott the whole thing. Even on TV. And he's a huge soccer fun.
Let's just hope that the bard's adage will prove itself true.
All's well that ends with Rex
Solved as a themeless. Once a few crosses made WORLDCUPWINNERS visible, that was my toehold into the top central portion. I agree with Rex about all the “dust-up” misdirection, more of a distraction than a welcome bit of added complexity. All in all, this took far over my average time to fill in all the three- and four-letter stuff. As a sportball nonenthusiast, I appreciated some of the clever clueing, but that’s about it.
I had a real hard time with the east - the double stacked Naticks of SKAT and ASTA crossing SERTAS, especially when NOWISE also made no sense.
Oh, I absolutely adored this one.
A World Cup theme. A World Cup theme. In June 2026. During the actual World Cup. The sort of idea that sounds so obvious in retrospect that you assume someone must have done it already, and then when it unfolds in front of you, you realize how elegantly the whole thing has been engineered. The circled entries are FIFA country codes—BRA, ARG, GER, ENG, ESP, ITA, FRA, URU—embedded in ordinary answers and clued with the championship years of the corresponding nations. That's a terrific Wednesday gimmick: accessible if you're a soccer fan, completely solvable if you're not, and satisfying from either direction.
My favorite part is that the theme manages to be both incredibly timely and incredibly restrained. Modern themed puzzles sometimes arrive carrying a megaphone and a PowerPoint presentation. This one just quietly lets BRAWL contain BRA, AFFRAY contain FRA, WARGOD contain ARG, TAURUS contain URU, GERWIG contain GER, and so on. The elegance is in the concealment. You're solving along, noticing odd clue references to years like 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002, and then suddenly the whole thing snaps into focus. A classic Wednesday "ohhhhhhh" moment.
And then there was the clue that nearly made me spit out my coffee: "Mars, notably [1978, 1986, 2022]" for WAR GOD. That's the kind of clue where you can practically hear the constructor giggling. Likewise "Cinco de Mayo birth, e.g. [1930, 1950]" for TAURUS. The puzzle keeps taking perfectly ordinary answers and forcing them to moonlight as World Cup trivia. It's absurd. It's delightful. It shouldn't work as well as it does.
The fill is also unusually lively for a theme this dense. GERWIG, PETRI, NOWISE, SKAT, ALMS, WIPE D, IDEA—nothing spectacular individually, but the grid has that smooth, professional feeling where you never hit a patch and think "well, somebody had to pay for the theme somehow." Even REX shows up at 70-Across, which I naturally choose to interpret as a tribute. No evidence supports this interpretation. I reject all competing theories.
Overall: exactly what I want from a Wednesday. Timely without being disposable. Clever without being convoluted. Funny without trying too hard. A puzzle that knows a giant international soccer tournament is happening and, instead of screaming WORLD CUP! WORLD CUP! WORLD CUP! from the rooftops, slips eight little country codes into the grid and trusts the solver to put the pieces together. That's confidence. That's craftsmanship. That's a very good Wednesday.
Easy, even though I know virtually nothing about World Cup soccer.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
Hand up for dea before ATF as the 6D antismugglers.
My 12D quick veer was a ZiG before it was a ZAG.
TkS before TYS for the notes of appreciation at 15D.
Got my muscles confused. lat before PEC at 58D.
WOEs:
AFFRAY at 18A.
EVIE, the daughter in Howard's End at 54D.
A little harder than Medium. I don't know soccer, as we call it in my home country -- I didn't even know that "the 2026 World Cup officially starts tomorrow". I had to get to PELE before I understood that soccer was the topic of conversation and that the three circled letters in each case were country abbreviations (which of course the revealer at 7D says plain as day; I guess I hadn't tackled that one yet). The years put in parentheses in the theme clues helped not a whit; they could have been made up randomly and I wouldn't have detected the difference.
For me the theme was boring, and I was itching to get it done because I want to get on with the day, so really any appreciation comes post-solve. There are some cute touches, like the FOOT in FOOT WARMERS and KICK in KICKSTARTER, and of course they don't have an ump calling balls and strikes; they have a REF for that. So some clues were subtly there, but in the heat of battle you don't always pick up on such hints.
But then there were the annoying aspects, like LUSTS (poorly clued), and the cross of AFFRAY and TYS -- I literally had to run the alphabet to get the last letter Y (at which point, I was all like "oh yeah, I guess that's a word"). Waffled between NARITA and NAkITA, and bungled Greta's last name. "NUDGER", yeah, okay. Don't know my card games either, but I thought there was a card game called "Spit", and then later I misspelled SKAT with a "c". Actually, both recall the Greek stem skat- which means "shit", which sounds like it could be a card game as well. I'll have to look up the origin of SKAT once I submit this post, which is gonna be right... (have a good day, folks!) now.
Solved it with only one look-up (to confirm the REINA/NARITA cross), but the music never sounded. This has occurred a few times in the past. Suggestions?
Great puzzle, took me a while to figure it out, but once we got that it was World Cup Winners that made it a little easier to come up with some of those more obscure answers. 12:03 for me so I think that's medium on a Wednesday. The clue on 70A was a very poor editing choice, almost a cheap shot.... you put OFL in the marquee corner spot and then.... clue it that way???? IMEANCMON!! Enjoyed learning that URUguay won the 1st FIFA World Cup, at home I might add, 4-2 over Argentina. There were only 13 teams in that 1st tournament, only 4 from Europe. Thanks, David and Ethan !!!
I thought hUnGER was a much better motivator (34D) than NUDGER.
I don't think of NARITA as crosswordese. Twelve appearances this century - about once every two years.
crouCh at 31D and heapON at 32D, both 'confirmed' by CORNET led to some brief trouble, but basically a very easy Wednesday.
Enjoyed the bonus PELE entry. I got to see him play with the Cosmos in the seventies. We lived in Maryland at the time but my father drove us up for a game.
Same problem as Rex with AFFRAY, and same reaction to the small number of WORLDCUPWINNERS. May some choppy construction but also a lot of fun wordplay involving references to soccer. As a young American decades ago I had little feel for the global importance of soccer, or FOOTball as the rest of the world knows it. At a corporate training site in Europe I was watching a CUP match with a group of Europeans when an instructor came by to tell us the class had resumed. Aside from a few humorous rude remarks, no one moved. The class was re-scheduled.
I thought it missed the mark - mostly I suspect due to the amount of strain that the theme put on the grid (see AFFRAY, for example, which appears to have been included out of desperation). There is also collateral damage to the fill, so you end up with stuff like GERWIG crossing REINA. It might be a fair trade off if you’re the type of sleuth who enjoys deciphering the theme answers, and/or is a soccer fan, and/or knows the country codes, etc. I prefer puzzles that are not as theme-forward - so this one wasn’t for me.
Two nits re individual entries. I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase NOWISE before, hopefully that’s just a “me” thing and in fact it has more currency IRL. Also, is it really necessary to clue a zodiac sign with reference to a holiday in a foreign country ?
I found it harder than medium. Crossing NARITA and REINA at a vowel was a Natick for me.
Naticked on NARITA crossing REINA. Naticked on EVIE and MIRIAM. Not too bad though.
Hey All !
If those crazy Golden Knights don't start shooting for the net, there will be no ESPYS for them! (And no Stanley CUP) They were passing, and passing, and passing, and passing. Shoot the damn puck!
*Ahem* Sorry about that.
Got stuck in Center with the trifecta of names, GERWIG/REINA/NARITA. Also had GoTWET and WIrED, and the silly ole brain was not letting me see pattern recognition with having WORLD_Ur_I_NERS. WORLD OUR DINNERS? No nevermind that I had completely forgotten about the PELE clue. Yes, I know the WORLD CUP is starting, but what can you do?
42 Blockers today, again the extra 4 are Cheater Squares. But they help tremendously in getting the Theme to work out, so, OK.
Liked puz overall, didn't know only 8 Countries have all the World Cups. 22 Cups do far, let's have #23 be someone else! (Go USA!)
REX gets another point. That's 2 for the year!
@pablo, I think we might have to start giving you points for OTTER appearances, as apparently no one knows how to put PABLO or even PAUL in a puz!
Hope y'all have a great Wednesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Three random points:
• We’ve seen Greta GERWIG alluded to in Times puzzles before, but always through the answer GRETA, never through her surname. Lovely to see her finally get her well-deserved due.
• David J. Kahn has shown in his 191 Times puzzles that he loves making tricky clues that require steps to get to the answer. He, along with his grandson Ethan carried on the tradition today, with clues such as [Used one], [Deliver up], and [Suit in a certain suite].
• Since we have CORNET and a backward TAPS in the Middle West, here is a short info bite regarding horns and “Taps”. The bugle, which has no keys that the fingers press down, is the traditional horn for “Taps”. The cornet, which has keys, is sometimes preferred because it has a warmer, more solemn sound. And the trumpet, also with keys, is the most popular because far more musicians have it. You’re welcome.
A timely, fun, and satisfying solve for me. Thank you, David and Ethan!
After the solve, my thought was verbatim what @Rex said, "Timeliness is this puzzle's one big virtue". The nugget of information that it is only these eight countries that have won the world cup was a bit more interesting to me than the solve itself. It's a perfectly serviceable Wednesday, it just didn't sparkle and pop for me as much as others.
It was kinda fun to see what countries were hidden where, and other than AFFRAY, none of them were too much of a stretch to make that magic happen.
Once I saw PELE, it wasn't very difficult to see what was going on (the SE corner across group were all gimmes for me so PELE fell easily.) So after that, the spanner revealer (always appreciated) came quickly with just a couple of letters.
No terrible hold-ups, but like @Rex, I had *ump* over the correct REF for awhile. Even when I fixed that up, AFFRAY did *not* come easily. The proppers were also not known to me and the crossing of EVIE and MIRIAM caused some pain. But nothing that really stopped me in my tracks.
KICKSTARTER and FOOTWARMERS made for some nice long non-theme downs and while there was a lot of short stuff, no real junk. Well....maybe AFFRAY...
Looking to see what kind of Dust ups happen in my part of New Jersey that's about 15 miles from MetLife stadium, we'll find out!
Thanks David and Ethan, appreciate what it took to make this happen, clever stuff that came at just the right time.
I feel like nowise was vaguely familiar but I can't remember ever hearing it in a long time. My phone autocorrected it to noise just now
Nick and Nora Charles were eagerly anticipating the arrival of their puppy. So they were thrilled when they got the message: ASTA is born.
Some folks may find the frequent inclusion in the puzzle of TET offensive.
Ever since his birthday picnic was ruined by them when he was eight years old, the exterminator devoted his life to AVENGE ants.
When my wife and I, both in our mid-70's, attend a matinee performance by the NJ Symphony, we bring the average age of the audience down to about 90. So the Orchestra wisely employs a team of NUDGERs, pokers, and elbowers to try to keep the listeners awake so the music is not drowned out by snoring. The White House could use a good one.
I consider myself a soccer fan. Played the game in high school and college, then club soccer until I turned 65. I was pretty psyched about this World Cup. But then FIFA, in the person of its suck-up president Gianni Infantino, takes note of the situation whereby Our Grifter-in-Chief (a) demands a Peace Prize; (b) is dumber than a rock; and (c) can be manipulated easier than a puppet. So Gianni invents the FIFA Peace Prize and awards the first and, so far, only one to the Warmonger himself. This almost got me to boycott the whole thing, but my name was already in the FIFA ticket lottery, so I decided to hold my nose and see what happens. Well what happens is that FIFA builds a lottery system designed to be extremely time-consuming for months on end, a system that warns you constantly of the disastrous consequences of diverting your attention from their ad-serving lottery site lest your ticket opportunity come and go in the time it takes you to pee. If, like me, you persevere through multiple rounds of this over a period of months, you may be blessed with an opportunity to buy first- round games between as-yet unknown opponents for as little as $800 per ticket, all set up in a way that quite blatantly encourages scalping (this part takes some explanation, but I've gone on too long already). My bottom line is that I love the game and I love the World Cup, but it is being moved by the same spirit as AI, MMA, VC and ICE.
I'm so sorry for the rant, and I did enjoy figuring out the theme early enough that I could look at unfilled circles and think "let's see, we haven't used FRA or ENG or ARG yet," which made everything super easy. Thanks for a fun puzzle, David J. Kahn and Ethan Quigley.
Are you aware of the money our Criminal-in-Chief and his spawn are making from the world cup and fifa? The graft is disgusting. I won't be watching one flippin' second of it!
Nice write-up. TY
I guess KICKstarter and FOOTwarmers are not technically theme answers, but they sure are theme-related--a nice plus, IMO.
Don't get the hullabaloo over AFFRAY. As an Irish American, every St Pat's Day I sing "The Rocky Road to Dublin" that contains the lyric "....they joined in the AFFRAY, we quickly cleared the way for the rocky road to Dublin..."
Bad fill, not just crosswordese: NUDGERS, SERTAS.
Some fun fill: NUANCE, JIGSAW, FOOTWARMERS, KICKSTARTER
NORTH-CENTRAL: Absolutely awful. REFATFTYS so we can get AFFRAY? Yikes.
I think the puzzle app can tell when you've gone to Google to do a lookup. :-)
I must be getting old; AFFRAY seems like a normal word to me. Old-fashioned, sure, like ASTA and ALF, all of which I was happy to see.
My experience with EVIE/MIRIAM was just like Rex's. Never seen the TV show; I have read the book, but I seldom remember the names of characters, and this was no exception.
I got ELY entirely from crosses, and only noticed it when I looked over the completed grid. It's a ridiculous clue. I'd have preferred "US gateway to the Quetico."
Don't know much about soccer... but when preparing to respond gratefully to gifts received I head the list TYS. Cuz I'm old and I still write them. On stationery. With a pen.
Crossing NUDGER with NOWISE is inexcusable. What a sad puzzle.
Also, Shakira actually has 3 official World Cup songs! Waka Waka from 2010 South Africa, which was so popular they brought her back to do La La La for Brazil 2014, and she just Dai Dai for the current iteration.
I became a soccer fan from checking out the '22 WC. I watch a lot of Premier League and EFL as well as American leagues. I will be watching as many WC matches as possible. I am not going to deny myself the enjoyment of watching. The politics are ugly but what else is new?
Amen to everything @egs said about loving soccer and being dismayed by the political aspects. I too played in high school and college and spent about 25 years coaching high school and middle school kids. Didn't get into the World Cup lottery, but I have been to games at Emirates Stadium (Arsenal) and The Bernabeu (Real Madrid)--blows on fingernails, polishes them on shirt front. And like @egs found the country abbreviations helpful in the solve.
No real snags, I've been to the Reina Sofia museum, he said, bragging some more, which is wonderful. The EVIE/MIRIAM cross filled itself in. I'm always a little surprised to see an R in a Japanese word (NORITA), but maybe I shouldn't be.
Today's old friend is ASTA. What's nicer than a missing dog coming home?
Timely indeed, DJK and EQ. Didn't Just Kick off the World Cup, it did so with Excellent Quality. Thanks for all the fun.
Side note -The USWNT (remember them?) won a wild game in Brazil yesterday. Brazil lost two players and the whole coaching staff to red cards.
I appreciate the offer but just seeing OTTER is reward enough for me. I may try to stake a partial claim to PAOLO though.
O e d has affray as obsolete or archaic fwiw
For someone who has no interest in soccer, I can’t believe how easy and enjoyable this puzzle was.🎈🎈🎊🎊
A more effective motivator than a mere NUDGER is a NagGER, looked/sounded a little dicey though. Once had a real estate transaction go south, one party reneged. Had to be careful not to refer to them as the "renegers"!
In the same way that TYS are not notes themselves, I'm a little surprised that Rex did not call out 9 down. Wikipedia's logo is a JIGSAW puzzle, not a JIGSAW itself. Their logo is not the tool used to make the puzzle shapes. I find it particularly disappointing when there are a dozen quality options for cluing JIGSAW. For example, "Puzzle maker's tool" would have had us all thinking crossword puzzle off the bat. Poor clue, missed opportunity.
Apparently, NOWISE is a single word. Who knew? I'm pretty sure I've never encountered it before. Crossing it with NUDGER made that N the last square I filled.
“Nowise.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nowise. Accessed 10 Jun. 2026.
So true for most of us… “keep anything on screen for more than ten minutes and suddenly I find I am an expert with a vested interest in the outcome.”
A great theme and a horrible puzzle. I figured out the theme the second I plopped GERWIG in on my first pass, but the fill and even some of the theme answers were garbage. AFFRAY, the two “dust up” clues, the ridiculous NO WISE, the trivia and names, the card game I’ve never heard of, etc.
The theme probably didn’t need a revealer, and definitely needed a larger grid so it could have better theme answers and fill.
My favorite part of the puzzle was searching for the themes with a single pre-1990 year for ENG because of the chant “Two world wars and one World Cup!”
Wonderful! Finding the WC winners was fun. Learning that there are eight of them. A bit of crunch.
A delightful Wednesday.
Go Lewis!
I looked it up. It’s a word. Webster says first used in 14th century.!!!
Im surprised Rex went so easy on this one. As a puzzle it’s pretty bad. Choppy, several Naticks, and full of bad fill. It’s a good example of a puzzle that was run only because it was timely. And as has already been pointed out by others in the comments FIFAs corruption is unbearable. I like soccer but I won’t be watching a second of it.
What does the country code mean? I’m really confused at first I thought it was dial codes but England/uk is 0044 so I’m confused. Thanks in advance
NO WISE is quite familiar to me. Not as a single word, but two as I have it here, and often (usually?) embedded in the phrase "in no wise" which may be translated as "in no respect" (or in no way whatsoever, in no degree, under no condition, never, etc.). You probably won't hear it as you stand in line at the coffee shop; the register is a little more elevated than casual, and I think you're more likely to encounter it in print. But it is an old expression.
El fútbol apesta.
Soccer sucks.
People: 9
Places: 6
Products: 7
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 33 of 78 (42%)
{I'm AFFRAYED to tell you the NUDGERS of Gunkopolis and 🦖 the dog plan no celebrations for this ghastly paean to an organization that makes the USA look uncorrupt and makes professional golf look like it has class.}
Funny Factor: 0 😫
Tee-Hee: GAY. LUSTS. GET WET.
Uniclues:
1 Totally blabbed.
2 When mold gets randy in a lab.
3 Internet troll's mom makes him breakfast. Arf.
4 Thick socks walked the aisle.
5 The subtle truth you'll always be paying more than it says.
1 SOO LET OUT IDEA
2 PETRI LUSTS
3 WAR GOD WAKES
4 FOOT WARMERS WED
5 RATES NUANCE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: No, no, we're serious, he's our leader. YES, REALLY ETS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This Wednesday made me feel absolutely stupid. I needed some help from the "tricky clues" section of today's NYT blog. Missed some that I should have gotten, but others were just never going to come to me.
My sentiments exactly! To hell with the Trump/FIFA WC!
What foreign country? Millions of USAers celebrate Cinqo de Mayo.
Thanks, Lynn.
I’d consider it an honour. Dogs are elevated beings in some beautiful ways. Now Jenny, there’s a loaded name…
I liked how this puzzle doubled-down on its fogeyishness, from its old-timey entries to its timeless ignorance of politics, by cluing GAY as "cheerful". We get it; you've been around the block. Pride!
Apt FOOT [+BRAWL?], KICK, and PELE soccer add-ons, here.
Timely puztheme, even tho M&A ain't much into that sport, sooo ... ok. Won't try to red flag anything.
staff weeject pick: REX. honrable mention to the circled country club members.
.. and primo weeject stacks, all 4 corners. Did need an OLE in there somewhere, tho...
[1] days without a ?-marker clue.
A mere Q short of a pangrammer puzgrid.
Nice RuINA/NuRITA no-know gnat-tick pair-up.
some fave stuff: Un-blocked grid-spanner revealer, right down the center of the field [Gooaal!]. JIGSAW/JAZZ. KICKSTARTER.
Thanx for the World-ly Cup of fun, Mr. Kahn & Quigley dudes. Any relation to BEQ, Ethan? Just wonderin.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I have nonidea whether Trump or his kin and coterie are profiting from the WC.
I do lnow FIFA is widely acknowledged as one of—possibly the most— corrupy organizations in sport.
BTW, Ethan Quigley is David J. Kahn's grandson, and being that David co-authored a Times puzzle with Ethan's mom (in 1998), now three generations of the Kahn family have been published in the Times.
Thank you! Glad I’m not the only one who had that thought and tried to picture the logo with a JIG SAW, which is definitely not the same thing.
Mostly medium given my WORLD CUP knowledge is scant at best.
I came to an abrupt halt at the AFFRAY/TYS cross. AFFRAY was a WOE (hi @Rex et. al.) and TkS before TYS and REp before REF were costly erasures but I knew ApFRAk was not a thing. I figured it out but it took some staring.
Another costly erasure - misspelling MIRIAM (hi again @Rex).
Solid timely theme, liked it but @Rex i right about the fill.
I’vebarely watched soccer at any level, but I always cringe when I hear it referred to as football. Just curious, is that 42% a record for the gunk gauge?
1966 is the year England won the World Cup, it is not a country code.
Texans of all persuasion celebrate it as well
Actually, Cinco de Mayo is more popular in the United States than Mexico.
MALE world cup winners
Unlike Rex, I am not sports susceptible but when I spent a week in Portugal, I found myself watching a lot of soccer because wherever you went, there was a TV with a soccer game playing. It wasn't the World Cup, just what everyone there seemed to be obsessed with. Later, back home, I found myself interested enough to watch a game that was on a TV at a bar I was at. It didn't last - I don't plan on watching any World Cup unless I find myself in front of a TV where it's on.
I was being optimistic about 14A. Instead of LETting the waistband OUT, I was going to take it in. This didn't work with anything there, obviously, and eventually came out. The only thing I originally had in that area that stayed in was LUAU, the one I was least sure about.
When did I finally figure out what this puzzle was about? When I got PELE down in the far SE. At least I've finally remembered TERPS as being associated with a Maryland team.
I did have a DNF, putting in NUDGEs for 34D and not checking the NARITA cross. And "lat" had to go once lAWN made no sense for the 58A clue, although I just finally got the clue for PAWN, as I was seeing it as a verb. A noun, aha.
David and Ethan, thanks for a puzzling Wednesday puzzle.
I had an oddly tough time with this one, despite getting the theme immediately (I literally work in professional soccer, so I'd hope to nail that part), which helped get the answers including country codes. There wasn't even a particular sore spot- I just slogged (compared to the average Wednesday) through the whole thing.
+1!
As a fellow football fan, I agree wholeheartedly. The minor blemishes in this puzzle pale in comparison to the stain left on the beautiful game (and on our country).
Tough and not fulfilling for me. Had NAGGER before NUDGER. Don't care for either word, actually.
But the players have worked so hard to get here. Lets not penalize them, despite the Orange Virus and corrupt Infantino.
NUDGER is a bad one
I’m with you. I really like the theme and most of the answers. I particularly liked AFFRAY which is definitely a word used in English criminal proceedings for public order offenses.
Probably a different letter wrong. That what happens to me. I’ll keep looking and then there is a silly typo I never noticed. When all correct the music has always sounded for me.
What’s with all this dumping on AFFRAY? It’s a perfectly legitimate word.
Well ranted. I agree completely, the orange one and Infantino make the whole event impossible to support.
egs. Nice post. I agree with your feelings about FIFA. Possibly more corrupt than the IOC. FIFA Peace Prize? C'mon!
American football (until 5-10 years ago) was played professionally in 2 countries while FIFA has 211 members.
My feelings and experiences so far with this world cup exactly. I was lucky to “win one of the lotteries”. Got 4 tickets in my cart for random game with unknown teams in the first round. Almost hit submit then saw the $1800 price tag and thought to myself- what the hell am I doing here? It’s free on my television. Never bought and don’t plan on attending. I’ll watch though even though I want to boycott.
Have been a soccer fan for 40 years and missed out last time the World Cup was in the states so had been looking forward to this. Nothing but greed and corruption…not that that’s something new with FIFA.
Thanks for that. I remember that I thought, "That's stupid", and then forgot to make a note of it. And I'm a Wikipedia contributor.
I groaned when I saw the circles, but it turned out okay. The theme is just fine. But!!!!!....
All the @#$%& names!! Look at the lower right: there is a stack of eight consecutive names: SKAT, AST, UTES, NARITA, TERPS, TET, ELY, REX. And they are crossed by four down names: KICKSTARTER, SERTAS, PELE, STYX. Only a few of those were Unknowns (notably SKAT and TERPS), but several more Unknowns elsewhere: ALF, SOO, BLAIR, REINA, GERWIG, MIRIAM, and EVIE. Yuck. The sheer mass and weight of them totally ruined the puzzle for me.
And it's a shame because my younger brother was a huge soccer fan. Growing up, of course we had no VCRs or anything, so he often got up in the middle of the night to watch games.
Okay, so what's a WPOTY, and when did people (Crossword enthusiasts, no less!) stop using actual "words" to communicate?
Names crossing names!
GERWIG/REINA/NARITA (TRIPLE Natick!)
EVIE/MIRIAM (with ESPYS thrown in for good measure!)
*UGH!*
I loved your take on altering a waistband. I wish I could be that optimistic.
Some owners choose humorous names for their boats. One of my former marina neighbors named his "Yes, Dear". (His wife approved.) Today's 18 Across, commented on by REX and others, reminded me of the name emblazoned across the stern transom of a large sailboat "A Frayed Knot".
Like footie @9:35 and Whatsername @ 11:16, I did the side eye to "Wikipedia's logo, e.g" for 9D JIGSAW. The logo is a single piece of a JIGSAW puzzle, not a JIGSAW itself. And while I'm on the subject, I have a JIGSAW and I know from experience that you wouldn't use it to make a JIGSAW puzzle! A scroll SAW would be the tool for that. (The link is to a Wiki page where you can also see their logo.)
I kept trying to find a way to fit NO DICE where NOWISE was supposed to be. Totally unfamiliar with the term.
GAY can still mean "cheerful," just as STRAIGHT can still mean "uncurved."
By the way, pretty gettable Spelling Bee today. It had to be under 15 minutes to get Queen Bee.
Sorry folks, really didn't like all the Naticks and names in this one. Still don't understand NOWISE. Why is Deutschland (GER) anglicized but Spain (ESP) is not? Might not be a bad idea to print this one out in case I ever need to provide questions for pub trivia night.
@Whatsername 11:22 AM
Oh, don't we wish! I'm pretty sure the all time high was 53% from earlier this year, but we've had a significant number 45% and above. My modus operandi is to celebrate puzzles under 20% (rare) and get super smarmy about those over 40% (unfortunately not so rare). We usually hear "PPP" grumbles starting in the 35% range, but it depends on wheelhouse solves. If you know the people, you don't notice the gunk, but when you don't know them it quickly ruins a puzzle.
Roo. I will apologize before I start, I am not a fan of your hometown team. When the ownership group submitted their proposal to the NHL's Gary Bettman in 2016, he practically peed himself in glee. He immediately said no to Quebec City, an historic hockey locale, and proceeded to change the expansion draft rules to make Vegas a success from the start. I'm sure I've seen photos of him from a decade ago with drool running out the corners of his mouth and dollar signs in his eyes.
Let me be clear here: I don't hate the players. Mark Stone's pretty solid (does he ever smile?) and Mitch Marner's found his game in the desert. (And George McPhee is one of the best GMs in the sport.) It's the system that pisses me off. When we - Vancouver (and Buffalo, too) - joined the league in 1970, we got nothing but 3rd and 4th liners. Do I sound a wee bit pissed. I am. I have no real love for Carolina but I really hope they beat you guys. Sorry, but I find myself glued to the screen hate-watching the finals. Go Canes!
Aside from all that, no matter who wins, I will continue to read and enjoy your entertaining posts.
Oh, how exciting! After James Reece and Lindsey Horan and the USWNT on Tuesday, I get this. A Wednesday that is almost as boring as the game it uses as a theme.
And NOWISE and NUDGERS, to boot. No thanks.
TY! Nice......
Seconded!
Oh, nice to find out that those years are the years the country won - thank you! I liked this puzzle a lot - informative fun for those of us who don’t follow football (soccer).
Hands up for Ump and Dea, although I did enter them in light pencil. I love NARITA airport.
Good comments today - especially TrevorTheFosterDad, and jberg for pointing out the FOOT and KICK entries
the world cup (not just this one) is a perfect example of how those charge can ruin the entire experience because they have to wring every last cent from fans. here's hoping this is the only soccer-themed puzzle over the next couple months. at least ASTA showed up…
Am I the only one who thinks that “56D: Only player on three victorious teams in this puzzle” is a violation of some basic crossword puzzle rule. It gives away the basic theme of the puzzle by telling us that this mysterious “Global Club” is actually a group of teams, and probably sports teams at that.
Good theme and on target for a Wednesday. So look forward to one of the great sporting events. Sit back and enjoy brothers and sisters!
HAAA! Great question! Lots of crossword jargon used here by aficionados that decry crosswordese in puzzles.
Tran
FWIW
ASTA and SERTA have both appeared so often in the Times puzzle that they are called crosswordese. It you want to do the puzzle regularly you need to remember them. They will appear again.
In fairness to the puzzle, neither word can be part of a natick Skat has appeared before and is a fairly well known card game. and is not a proper name
Sorry about your take on soccer, but you seem to have lots of company here. Maybe more folks would like the game more if after each kick of the ball everyone stopped and got in a group to figure out what they would do next. The defense could do the same thing, and it would allow lots more time for commercials.
Southside Johnny
These days, Cinco de Mayo is no more foreign than St. Patrick’s Day. As noted it is not a national holiday in Mexico. Like Cinco de Mayo St. Patrick’s day was made a big thing in the US by immigrants. Both are not foreign at all.
@Les, I'm with you in hating the way Vegas was given a red carpet into the league. I have never watched a Golden Knights game and I don't plan to change that. And Quebec Nordiques were my favorite team!
I'm guessing it's Worst Puzzle of the Year.
Absolutely the worst puzzle I have ever seen. A completely idiotic mess of obscure proper nouns and an utterly boring and inane gimmick too. Fail.
Thank you for this! It’s nice to get Queen Bee occasionally!
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