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Measures of search engine optimization / WED 8-5-26 / Sparsely populated African land / Alexander who served under Reagan, Nixon and Ford
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Constructor: Daniel Bodily
Relative difficulty: Easy, 10:44 on a short grid (14 rows) while on the subway
THEME: Guys.... help! I have no idea!!! What was the point of all of this? Please enlighten me in the comments.
Every single row of the puzzle has two entries, which form a two-word phrase. For example, though CHART and TOPPER are each valid words (and entries of their own!) they are cross-referenced, so that the clue for CHART is [With 6-Across, #1 hit] and the clue for TOPPER is [-]. Note that this is unconventional, in my experience the clue for TOPPER should be [See 1-Across].
To repeat, every single row follows this pattern and I have no idea why. The first entry used the term "#1" so I thought that could be something... WESTERN of WESTERN SAHARA is on the West side of the grid? BOOLEAN implies a binary and there are two entries per row? I'm getting NOWHERE. Is the theme a BUST???
Word of the Day: Arizona Iced Tea (Beverage sold in pastel-colored cans) —
Hey besties, as you may have surmised from the above prattling, it's Malaika here for a Malaika MWednesday! I solved this puzzle while listening to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack and was done before What's the Buzz was over. Then I stared at it for another ten minutes trying to figure out why this puzzle exists.
Word of the Day: Arizona Iced Tea (Beverage sold in pastel-colored cans) —
AriZona is known for its "Big Can" drinks holding 22 US fl oz (650 mL) of iced teas, juice drinks, and other beverages with markers indicating their intended retail price of US$0.99 in the United States
• • •
Besties, if you are a long time Malaika MReader, you know that I want a revealer. I want a reason! I want a bit of wordplay that explains the trick and I want to go "Oh, now I get it!" I very very very rarely want to solve a puzzle and say "Wow, it must have been so hard for the constructor to build this puzzle. Good for them!" Alas, I think this is what we've got. I am still holding out hope that one of you will point out a very obvious raison d'etre for this puzzle that I missed because half my brain was occupied eavesdropping on the guy sitting next to me who was arguing to his friend that Cars was a better movie than Up.
 |
| To the guy on the Flatbush Av bound 2 train tonight-- you are so wrong!!! |
It must have been stupendously hard to lay out these entries in these perfect two-entry rows, all of them gliding atop each other like vaguely offset but still balanced Jenga blocks in a stack. There are some tricks that help, like the black squares in the corners (NYT rarely allows those) and the runs of three-letter vertical entries, four of them in a row (it's rare to even get three in a row). Not to mention.... CENO, HAIG, ODU, ADZE, ERTES, CABER, TNN, IANS, NNE, ADM, LON, AGARS, ABIE..... Was it worth it? I suppose if the majority of solvers thought this puzzle was a treat, then it was worth it! I am not one of those, but I'm intrigued to hear if any of y'all are.
I don't have a ton more to say except that my very first entry(s?) in this grid were BOOLEAN ALGEBRA. De Morgan's Laws hell yeah.
Bullets:
- [Temple services?] for HEAD MASSAGES — Truly incredible clue. Wow!
- [Web crawlers, e.g.] for INTERNET BOTS — People do not say this! You just say "bots." "Internet ad" is another one I see in puzzles a lot. No one says that!
- ["Well, I have to save my ___" (Shrek line)] for ASS — I have a core memory of being so young that I didn't know ass meant donkey but I didn't even know ass meant butt either and asking my parents why this was funny
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136 comments:
I liked it, but admittedly on the “ Wow, it must have been so hard for the constructor to build this puzzle. Good for them!” level
Medium-tough. Not only was all the cross referencing very annoying it also consumed an inordinate amount of nanoseconds.
No WOEs or costly erasures just irritation.
Not a fan or what @Malaika said.
Hi Malaika; wow I'm sorry I can't shed any light on the theme. Perhaps 12 and 14 across LEADING NOWHERE set the stage? Amazing construction feat but... what is the actual theme?... no idea.
An awful lot of names: CERA HAIG RIO REA GARR NIN ARIZONA SEGA ERTES SAHARA UTAH IANS ABIE (BIC ONO ODU LIN*) LON INDIANA HOOSIER (* = four 3 letter names in a row! Good grief.) Not much fun.
With military ranks, with a very limited knowledge base I always refer to M*A*S*H*, so 19 down "Capt.'s superior" I had MAJ (major)... Burns vs Pierce, right? Oh, jeez ADM!, so we're evidently on a ship. Okay!
Liked it more than Malaika did. I appreciate the work that went into it, and like Malaika I had never seen that gimmick before and probably never will again. Given the work that went into the across words, I forgive the downs.
I agree with M on this one. File this under “just because you could doesn’t mean you should.”
Can’t help identify the theme. But LON and “lawn” sound about the same as “on” and “aw” do, which is not much. The need to have ABIE as an answer is also a problem. ODU is not a thing for me. The tiresome returns of ONO, TRES, RIO, ERE, ESE, NNE, and RNA are also unfortunate. But “look ma, no hands,” as far as the puzzle stunt goes. I guess this puzzle was more fun to make than to solve.
After such a cute Tuesday this was a boring Wednesday. Just straight mediocre.
Wow, it must have been hard for the constructor to build this puzzle. Good for them! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Perfect Wednesday.
Mostly easy despite the paired-answer structure. Didn't know BOOLEANALGEBRA, but I finally thought of Old Dominion University in Norfolk (ODU), which did the trick. Clue for HEADMASSAGES was a Saturday-level misdirect, but otherwise the cluing was straightforward.
I've seen [-] as a clue for "continuation" quite often, and having a "with" cross-reference in the first clue rather than a "see something elsewhere in the grid" in the second did not bother me. Don't think a revealer was intended or needed. Probably just a "wonder if I could do that" moment. Not an exciting puzzle but a cute bit of construction.
Also, LON is a good name for a groundskeeper? To me, LON rhymes with Don, on, upon, Avon--not LAWN, which I assume is what they were going for. I wanted "LOt", but that's no longer a popular name since the downfall of Sodom and Gemorrah. I absolutely did not like this puzzle and unfortunately, @Malaika, I have no idea why it exists either. Feh.
No idea how there is a unifying theme. And I solved most of the theme answers not from the clues but from visualizing the words from the assembled letters. That can be fun, too, and it was for me.
Easy. Too easy for a Wednesday despite having no across clues on the right side. The downs were basically all crosswordese, and as Mmalaika points out, a revealer is desperately lacking.
* * _ _ _ (if my keyboard had a half-assterisk it'd be 1-1/2 *'s)
One overwrite, at 17A-18A: PAGE liNKS before RANKS. And one WOE, the 52D Norfolk, VA sch. I've heard of Old Dominion University but never heard it referred to as ODU.
Hi Malaika,
I think the point of this is simply the construction, that he got all fourteen lines to match as pairs. Nothing more than that. I found it to be tedious, but that’s me. From a fellow Brooklynite.
I got nothin’ for ya, Malaika. No idea what the point was either, other than it was a FEAT of construction. A slog to solve. I didn’t find it easy, though, getting held up in two sections, especially the bottom.
Why is LON an apt name for a groundskeeper? I wanted “Moe” there, but I also wanted “heads” after COUNTS. Couldn’t be both, but I didn’t think both were wrong. (Do people count NOSES? They seem harder to see than heads.) And I had a DNF because I thought it was BOOLiAN, and while FiAT seemed wrong, I thought perhaps there was another meaning of the word.
I usually don’t get as worked up as Rex over bad fill, but this was painful.
Malaika, I kind of liked it. I do agree about all the short stuff, but being forced to fill in a lot of downs to figure out two acrosses at once was a twist that made it a little different and a little bit more challenging
Lon is a homonym for lawn
I agree. It assumed a very particular regional accent (which I don’t have).
@Malaika – The Thursday (7/30/2020) puzzle by Joel Fagliano had a similar stunt, where every across answer linked to another across neighbor, and he did have a reveal that, IMO, worked: TWO TO ONE.
I think LON sounds like LAWN. Didn’t like it.
Another interesting grid from Mr. Bodily! We seem to be seeing him a lot lately. 10:04 for me, so on the easy side of medium for a Wed. CHART TOPPER, CARBON STORAGE, WESTERN SAHARA, and INDIANA HOOSIERS were the highlights for me. I liked it more than Malaika--it's a puzzle with interesting entries that happen to be paired. No more than that. Thanks, Daniel!
This construction idea is quite neat, so I appreciate the effort that was put into it. It must’ve been difficult to do. But this is the type of puzzle that you share with your nerdy best friend to get a bit of praise at your cool idea. Truly a most unpleasant experience for me to solve with very little payoff. Wednesday is a hard day to construct for, so while I can value the concept and execution (mostly), this one wasn’t for me.
I wanted it to be MOE. That would have been apt. Sigh.
Do people really think of Yoko Ono as a musician? Avante garde alleged artist, yes.
I had the exact same tangle up in the south east. Lon???? Moe is a far superior answer for that clue. But of course it doesn’t work. What a miserable slog of a puzzle.
I thought it was delightful: a small tour de force. I solved it by doing lots of downs, then intuiting the double crosses from the scattered letters. Very enjoyable.
Not a lot of fun but I can appreciate the chops to build it. 15 x 14 awkward grid that included little of any substance and became more of time consuming routine with the double references.
Everybody Knows This Is NOWHERE
I liked INDIANA HOOSIERS. Wanted Discrete Structures for 50a. Loaded with short glue to make the overall trick work - this was the definition of a slog.
Next Best WESTERN
Cool for the constructor no doubt - but a tepid Wednesday morning solve.
Peter CASE
Had a tough time with this one. Didn’t know CABER, ERTES, or CENO so got the CARBON STORAGE across clue last.
Okay, regarding the difficulty of making this puzzle, I’ll just say this. It took Joel Fagliano, a pro’s pro constructor, five years to make a similar one (7/30/2020), and from his notes, it sounds like most of the time was spent pulling out his hair.
Two points:
First, every across answer today not only has its crossing answers to aid in solving, but another across answer as well! That was a new solving experience, and just felt very cool and quite wonderful.
Second, 11 of the 14 paired answers are NYT debut answers! What? Really? Read those phrases, they all sound in the language. Daniel somehow filled this seemingly impossible-to-make puzzle with remarkable freshness!
That first point made the outing fun and memorable. The second, well, the skill that underpinned the making of this blew me away.
Daniel, sir, part of me is bowing down, and part of me is pumping my fists in a raving standing-O. This was a gem. Thank you!
Solved on just the downs. What a dud of a puzzle. Extremely annoying and tiresome. Terrible filler to get to THIS? Not worth it.
Agree. It's very rare for me to dislike a clue strongly, but I've never seen the name Lon before. Didn't like!
I’ve invited people to a party in September that requires much early planning. So I sent out a second message to everyone who expressed interest asking for a nose count.
Said no one ever.
Sorry, but this is the NY Times not the valley girl times. LON most definitely does NOT rhyme with LAWN in New York.
It’s an interesting stab at a theme. Unfortunately, it’s more interesting as a feat of construction than it is for the enjoyment it generates while solving.
The segmented grid doesn’t help, since it is nearly impossible to flow from one section to the other. So it’s akin to solving three different puzzles, which means you are going to need three separate footholds. I fared pretty well in the top and bottom third, but no such luck in the middle section. Trying to get a foothold when the crosses included ERTES, CABER, and CENO wasn’t in the cards for me. I suspect that at that point the constructor had to make some concessions just to get the whole thing to hold together and the solving experience became collateral damage.
Anyway, an interesting diversion and I respect the effort, but in the end it pretty much just merits a shrug.
Same here, Wanderlust. Brilliant construction, unpleasant slog to solve. Also, it took me forever to find that BOOLiAN/FiAT problem.
Well, I do admire the FEAT of construction here. And found it easy except for the center West (can we say that?) I didn’t know CABER and although I had MASSAGES, I couldn’t figure out the HEAD part of that. ERTES was a mystery and I initially spelled CENO as CENa. So that area was a train wreck for me.
Selfishly, my first thought on seeing the clues for this puzzle was that it was going to be impossible to solve. Actually after getting started on the downs it was not that tough but objectively I have to admire the skill and patience it must have taken to construct this one. I can see how in the end LON for “lawn” was a forgivable stretch—it’s sooo close!
Hey All !
Well, holy rigatoni. First off, Id like to thank Daniel for stealing this idea from my brain! Har, kidding. But I had wanted to do something similar to this for a Midi puz submission. (Side note: Does the NYTXW team accept Midi submissions? Or do they reach out to established constructors and ask them to whip one up?)
Second, to be able to do an entire puz with entries that read across the whole grid, while marking the Downs actual things, is not only mind-boggling, but impossible! And yet, here it is.
Third, to get further impossible (I know that's not a thing, but it works for this puz 😁), every Across two-fers are one word! So nothing like HERE WE - GO AGAIN. [Maybe ICED TEA? But I'm very willing to let that go.] My goodness
Hats off, Daniel, for a fun romp through an impossible to make puz. I'll mail you a wig to cover up your HEAD, after you tore out all your hair making this!
Curious if Rex would've liked this, Meh-ed it, or tore it a new one.
I thought it was awesome. @Gary's gonna have a field day! Or he might be disappointed that he was robbed of his Uniclue opportunities. I predict a Tee-hee column at 7, 31, 56D. (I'm not even gonna attempt a Uniclue there!)
Hope y'all have a great Wednesday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I had Moe and considered Lon, but didn’t go with it for your reason. It took me some time to give up on Moe.
Not my cuppa today. Like others have said, more of a "Wow, that must have been very, very difficult to construct" kinda feeling at the end. Very impressive but did nothing for the joy of the solve.
I don't love a cross reference at every across clue but it forced a distant cousin to a downs only solve which made it a little interesting for me (I've never done it before)
Having said that, there *is* a lot to appreciate here. Every two-word phrase is very solid and a couple put up a bit of resistance. I had INTERNET BugS for a while as I took "crawlers" in the clue a bit too literally. I also forgot that there is an "I" in HOOSIER and without really realizing it I spelled it HOOSeER. That one made the SE very thorny as ABIE is unknown to me and LON took a while. Like someone else, I had *Moe* first which makes a lot more sense to me.
The mid-west gave me some trouble. CENO, CABER, and ERTES are nowhere near front of brain, and for whatever reason CARBON would not click for me even though it should have been somewhat of a gimme with the straightforward cluing, even without all those crosses to help. That was a "DOH!" moment.
Cluing for HEAD MASSAGES was likely my only highlight.
The lack of a revealer doesn't bother me all that much, but I agree with Malaika, this puzzle could have used one just to tie what was going on together a bit. I don't always need a "point" to a puzzle, but this may have been a puzzle where the lack of one left me scratching my head a little. But that's more a Hugh thing and not a nit on the puzzle.
Now I gotta go dust off whatever form I have of Jesus Christ Superstar (likely vinyl!) and cue that up. From the overture to the end, not a dull moment. The original album is a masterpiece, The movie from the early 70's is a major disappointment but I saw the show when it came back in the 90's to the Paramount Theatre in NYC and that was fairly good... It's all buzzing through my head now - Thanks Malaika! 😊
Daniel, while this one didn't check my boxes, the feat of construction and much of the fill is way cool. Thanks for this!
Definitely wanted this answer to be Moe!
I thought this was cool change of pace. I tried the acrosses first and came up with smash record before CHART TOPPER. I got HEAD MASSAGES from the temple services clue and would have been disappointed if it was wrong. I tried desert before SAHARA. Got BOTS and had COUNTS heads, and needed all the crosses to get NOSES.
Oof. I am with Malaika on this one. I also found it a little annoying that some of the crosses were expressions (CHART TOPPER), some were brands (ARIZONA ICED TEA) some were places…. TBH, my heart sunk when I opened the buzzle and saw all of the dashes. Finishing up on LON/lawn whatever that is was the CHART TOPPER.
Now I’m so curious as to how you pronounce “lawn”!
Took a look at the puzzle, saw that each row was a pair of answers, noticed 59 and 60 across, and confidently started with COUNTS HEADS. Opps! I guess we count noses, not heads. Heads are for massaging.
I neither particularly enjoyed nor hated it. It was rather easy for a Wednesday.
You'd think I'd learn -- every so often I will find myself thinking, "well the puzzle obviously want X, but that's not actually correct," only to discover much later that X was, indeed, not correct, and not what the puzzle wanted. Today, X = "capturE." as in CARBON capturE. I filled in the whole grid, got the "something is amiss" message, and spent two or three minutes finding the error. The puzzle seemed so easy that I had not checked the crosses on capture, or I would have found the error much earlier. The moral of this story? Trust the editors! I'll try to remember that next time.
OK, the theme. The puzzle was very easy, but it LOOKED hard, so there was some pleasure in realizing that I could actually solve it. And I do enjoy seeing a difficult trick being pulled off. Also, I learned more than I had known before about ARIZONA ICED TEA.
A well-made puzzle, but solving downs-only made it kinda lame, unfortunately. Also, Up is worlds better than Cars.
Lewis’s comments are always enlightening and today’s was one of his best. Thanks for the background! This puzzle didn’t disappoint me at all. I mean, it’s Wednesday, not Thursday, and I was suitably impressed with it’s neat execution. The lack of revealer wasn’t a disappointment. I was busy being impressed with the construction. The difficulty was easy and I only stumbled a bit on i for e in Boolean, such a cool word. Love the word, hate the math.
When I saw the layout of the puzzle, I thought I would have a lot of fun. Wrong! I solved it but with no enjoyment. No 🎈for me,
I had Moe first!
Ditto on moe vs LON
After reading the clues and filling in the top three split answers I thought this would be Monday-easy. It got a little harder for the Acrosses but the three-letter crosswordese Downs made the rest of it almost as easy.. I'm with the crew that thinks the point of all this was making a stunt puzzle which is indeed impressive, but not all that much fun to solve.
My NH native wife probably rhymes LON with "lawn". Not me. I rhyme LON with Ron, which is obviously the way it should be.
Redemption on remembering BIC from Sunday, when it took forever, but not today. The proof of having learned something is a change in behavior, as we used to say in the teaching game.
Bet you felt good when you completed this one, DB. Sad to say it Didn't Bring me much joy. Thanks for an interesting construction at least.
That one stuck out to me too. I originally had “MOE”. Can’t get more apt for a groundskeeper than that imo.
This old guy had fun. Though at first glance I thought I would hate it. Being forced to solve downs first was interesting, and then filling in each phrase became a second enjoyable puzzle! Breezy. Made me smile.
I had the same experience of scratching my head about a "theme" afterward. My best guess was that it had something to do with "crossing the T's" and "dotting the I's," because there are two T's (center top and bottom) and something like two connected I's (right in the center). After reading the constructor notes, etc. it seems the black square arrangement is unrelated.
Same error here, even solving top-to-bottom. I’ve become so dupe-insensitive, I never connected the two HEADs. Had to wade to the end of the downs to find it.
I actually always admire and enjoy a FOC (Feat of Contruction) puzzle that's good enough for the Gray Lady. While it seems that some would like to defenestrate Daniel Bodily, I'm not among them. As to a theme, isn't it obvious?
@adam 5:48 I had LOT for a long time! It basically fit
What is the point of this puzzle, Malaika? Why, the same as for any puzzle! To baffle, entertain, and in the end, give us a daily triumph to bolster our egos. This did all three for me. The theme? Two word phrases that cross the board on every line. That’s it and that’s enough.
Anonymous 8:02 - I pronounce it with a definite "awe" sound, which LON doesn't have.
Theme: Look What I Constructed!
Contrary to my usual dissatisfaction with a construction feat without meaning, I actually liked this one anyway.
Agree!! And that awful sounding west coast (Hollywood) pronunciation continues to gain prevalence thanks to TV, movies, etc. Fighting it feels like it's "all for naught" (does not rhyme with NOT!)
Down South Don does sound like Dawn and Lon does sound like Lawn. By the way … “The Man of a Thousand Faces” Lon Chaney … do young people not know him? Quasimodo? Phantom? They’ve all seen lots of Star Wars movies and know all the Marvel trivia but have they read Victoria Hugo?
As with many others, I appreciate that this is a different sort of puzzle, and I have some appreciation for that. But it wasn't much fun, having to fill in so many dull Downs to get the paired answers.
It doesn’t claim to rhyme. It’s a homophone for LAWN
I loved it! A fresh challenge. A memorable puzzle. Required a specifically new way of solving for me—tackling some downs, trying to get an across, going back to try some more downs. No revealer needed for me, I was happy to try something new!
I can’t believe you missed the obvious revealer. Look at the grid layout. If you move the two black squares on line 4 to the RD of CARD in the row below it, then move the corresponding symmetrical squares in rows 10 and 11, you get a mirror image of the number 2. Clearly a revealer for the two word clues.
Sorry, Malaika. Trying as hard as I can to give you some closure.
Just saying. Poo and poop for 56D
Shortly into the puzzle, I can't remember one that I had so little interest in solving (or trying to).
On to the New Yorker. Maybe Robyn's there.
I have no idea what the theme was but I loved it. How can a mathematician plus sports fan not love BOOLEAN ALGEBRA plus INDIANA HOOSIERS? I just don't get how you can solve it in 10 minutes. I flew through it without much thinking and still it was barely under 20 for me.
Enjoyed it. The origin is obvious- the constructor wondered if it would be possible to link all across answers like that and set out to achieve it. You can admire the feat of construction as you solve it even if that constraint doesn't make it the most colourful of solves, which it admittedly isn't. Only thing I didn't understand was the Lon clue which has been clarified above as apparently a homophone of Lawn somewhere in the US - certainly not here in Britain!
Thumbs down from me. Unenjoyable slog of PPP.
I generally like to count ears and divide by two, so I really had trouble with 59A/60A.
Did anyone else try to squeeze Walesa into 20D: Pole tossed in a Scottish game? (I googled famous Poles for that lame joke and learned that Marie Curie was Polish (as is the clearly mis-named Roman Polanski). BTW, Lech Walesa is still living, at age 82, and has been married to his wife Danuta since 1969(!), which is amazing since all of their friends thought they were polar opposites.
Hooraylean Algebra is far more popular that Boolean.
CARBON STORAGE reminded me, sadly, of my great-uncle Izzy, who was in the carbon paper storage business and was wiped out when xeroxing was introduced.
The theme may be found in the upper and lower middle grid Ts. It’s T for two and Arizona Iced Tea is the anchor.
@Mark 6:19 Lon and lawn don't sound alike for the majority of English speakers
@Anonymous 6:22 Even if you aren't a fan of old horror movies, Lon Chaney appears frequently in crosswords!
I guess I was lucky. I live in Switzerland and my edition had ampersands between the paired numbers. That made it easier but definitely not more enjoyable.
For many (like me), LON and lawn are pronounced the same, known as the cot-caught merger. But like the sari/sorry discussion the other day, I'm not sure it's cool to do "sounds like" clues for words that do *not* sound the same according to dialect.
Ontario Canadian here and LON and LAWN sound exactly the same to me
Up > Cars. I mean, Ed Asner!!!
Yes yes yes - LON does not sound like “lawn”
First sari/sorry, now lawn/lon. Give up these sounds like clues based on vowel sounds - their only purpose seems to be to cause pronunciation controversy. They will always make no sense to large segments of solvers.
My erasures tell the tale of my solve - nth before PhD, hat before WIG (Wig is better with the clue), to-do before MESS and my favorite, Moe before LON.
Daniel Bodily, I read your Wordplay comment and you don't enlighten us as to whether there's a theme, so I conclude the double answers are the theme. Overall, an interesting solve, thanks!
I loved this, super fun construction. Couple of weaker clues made it hard to finalize, plus having MOE instead of LON for the bottom had me stumped a while.
Right! It's obvious! What you see is what you get.
Me too. A new way to solve. No Star Wars, unknown actors and sports stuff. My husband and I enjoyed it. Thanks, Daniel
Totally agree.
TIL that there are whole regions of North America that say Lon Chaney like lawn Chaney. I think Will Shortz might have better edited the clue to say "in Canada" or "in Texas" or some such. That was frustrating. Don and Dawn sound the same? Wow. Mind blown.
CONSTRUCTORS: Just a reminder that solvers are paying money for this product. It's the solving experience that matters. I do not care in the least whether a puzzle was difficult or easy to construct. I'm not paying my hard-earned money for you to stroke your ego and impress your fellow constructors. I'm paying for a fun and interesting solving experience. For a puzzle to be 5 stars, it should be one of the highlights of solvers' day. This puzzle was dull and tedious. I don't like to be rude, but I think some constructors have lost sight of the purpose of crosswords. It's about the solvers, the people purchasing your product.
Could it be a riposte to Rex who likes to solve down answers first? The puzzle forced me to fill in as many down answers as possible before I could get the two word phrases.
Quite different. Liked. Especially liked the different feel to the solvequest. I have made runtpuzs that do this kinda thing, but no Trumpin way I'd ever in my wildest dreams try to make a 15x15 puzgrid that did this. Soooo ... I can see why the constructioneer decided he'd had enough, after a 15x14 successful fill-up.
Not the kind of puzgrid that AI is apt to help U fill, I betcha.
har. 48 black blocks. In a 15x14 puzgrid. New record density?
Does this puzstunt qualify, with its consistent Across antics, as a puztheme? I reckon I'd vote yep.
staff weeject pick: ODU. primo quad weeject stacks, NE & SW, btw.
fave stuff: The extended Jaws of Themedness. CHART+TOPPER, at the top of the puzgrid. HEAD+MASSAGES clue.
Best Ow de Speration puzthemer pairin: PAGE+RANKS. Never heard of that.
Thanx for the novel solvequest experience, Mr. Bodily dude. Next up for U, obviously: A 15xsomethin-or-other puzgrid with zero black blocks. [M&A actually tried to do this once, but it got pretty overwhelminly desperate eventually, fill-wise. At the bottom I ended up throwin in a coupla black blocks. I remember runtzpuz-mentor @r.alph chewin m&e out, for givin it up when I was almost there.] [Now I stick to Desperate Word Squares, of the 7x7 persuasion.]
Masked & Anonymo2Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Yeah, I thought the apt name might be MOE and thought myself clever. I ultimately liked my “apt name” better.
Only trouble I had was this corner. Had "moe" at first, clearly the best answer but eventually the L & P from crosses. Ran the alphabet & settled for "lop" hence counts poses!
@Hugh, I'll second you that my favorite of the (too much to call marquee, maybe) answers was HEAD MASSAGES, but only after I was ready to give up until I saw the ? in the clue; until then, we had been thinking they wanted something from Judaism and were nowhere.
BOOLEAN ALGEBRA. I've heard the phrase; can't explain a whit; perhaps better in a Friday or Saturday puzzle.
With the majority here; admirably constructed, but a slog to solve. And enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness writeup, Malaika; bottom line, in answer to your question, "Was it worth it?" Sorry to say, O-NO!
I very very very rarely want to solve a puzzle and say "Wow, it must have been so hard for the constructor to build this puzzle. Good for them!" - Malaika, please point me in the direction of a puzzle for which you would say that. I must know.
Bueno, tengo que salvar a mi burro.
Hey Malaika! I listened to the podcast you were on recently and enjoyed learning a bit more about the construction process and you. We might not say INTERNET BOTS now, but soon we'll need to distinguish between those online hunting down your entire life online to determine if we've said anything naughty about our overlords, and those BOTS breaking into your house to eradicate you in your sleep. MURDER BOTS has a nice ring to it.
Revenge of the uniclues! Over the years I've imagined a puzzle like this, but with the downs also following the same pattern so the entire southeast wouldn't be clued at all. Then you could have longer funnier clues. After looking at this one, I get the feeling it would be a construction feat, but maybe less interesting to solve unless there's a killer reveal. DRAWING A BLANK?
I think they made the cluing too simple even with so many blanks and the puzzle being undersized made it zip past. The two word phrases are well chosen so they're helping too. The downs are a gunky wreck, but whatcha gunna do?
HEAD MASSAGES running as [Temple services] is the stand out pairing of the day.
I looked up BOOLEAN ALGEBRA and it seems way less cool than regular algebra. No division sign?! I mean come on. But I do love logic, even though we display very little of it around here, so maybe I could be swayed into knowing more.
I would like to heartily recommend the movie Barbie if you have not seen it yet. It's even good for fuddy-duddies, ehem.
Kind of fun to see Alexander HAIG. He was a bulwark of my early days in crossword.
I am glad they gave us additional detail on which Anaïs we were looking for today. It's always very confusing.
🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 I'm thinking of changing my TEE-HEE list to the 🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 list. That's way funnier. But it's scary messing with years of ARSE counting excellence and tradition.
People: 12 {holy moly}
Places: 4
Products: 6
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 29 of 58 (50%)
{Pappy Gunk, Mammy Gunk, and the li'l Gunks packed up the harmonicas and hitched up the Gunkwagon and road into Gunkville to pick up some gunk at Gunkmart and have a fancy lunch at Bistro Von Gunk today.}
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: ASS. GOO.
Uniclues:
Well, half of these are already done, n'est-ce pas?
1 "How to Tell Latin Words from English Words for Those Who Got a B+ in Mrs. Beehive's 11th Grade Latin class in 1957" scrawled across big tear-off paper.
2 Where the moderators feel it's headed when they offer the class called: "How to Tell Latin Words from English Words for Those Who Got a B+ in Mrs. Beehive's 11th Grade Latin class in 1957."
3 Buzz the staff.
4 Box with Carrot Top's props.
5 File cabinet filled with old copies.
6 Mechanical men addicted to TikTok.
7 Reaches second base.
8 Step one in the book, "How to raise a family."
9 Give the thumbs down to a dumbed down version of a field of mathematics.
10 How vampires in Romania find your veins.
11 When you chuck a telephone pole in Brazil.
12 It's in the puzzle, just saying.
13 When know-it-alls realize they bought cubic zirconia.
1 CHART TOPPER
2 LEADING NOWHERE
3 PAGE RANKS
4 CARD CASE
5 CARBON STORAGE
6 INTERNET BOTS
7 GOES BUST
8 FIRST, MATE
9 BOO LEAN ALGEBRA
10 COUNTS' NOSES
11 RIO CABER FEAT
12 OWES SO HOT GOO
13 PHD CARAT MESS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The shorter leg on a one-legged popular cardinal at a priest convention. SYNOD STUD STUB.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aint no way you can handle Boolean algebra.
—Charles Pierce (AKA Flitcraft)
@RooMonster 7:45 AM
Right?! 7, 31, 56D ... even I knew not to touch that thing.
@Gary, supporting all the paired acrosses was certainly going to mean a whole lot of short, gunky fill. Indeed.
When the Gunk-o-meter spit out 50%, did you need to check its place in history? I, for one, don't know your gauge's current indoor record.
What a waste of time. What an annoying waste of time. What an annoying insipid waste of time. What an annoying insipid depressing waste of time.
You might want to read her bio on Wikipedia before being this smugly dismissive.
Anon 10:27. West coast Canadian here. Ditto.
Anon 10:43. Agreed. I had a fair bit of trouble with that sari/sorry thing because I say sah-ree for the wrap and sore-ee for the apology. Just a dumb premise. The puzzle is widely distributed, just like the accents of the people who solve it.
Had BOOLIAN/FIAT and hadn’t really looked at the clue for FIAT and could not figure out what was wrong in the puzzle!! Searched google to make sure CABER, ERTES, ABIE were all right and lost a good few minutes staring looking for a misspelled word when I just had the wrong word!
There is a doctor in NYC named Lon Wiener. My wife thinks that is hilarious.
@jberg 8:12 am: you're right, CARBON CAPTURE would have been much better.
Again I'm surprised by which answer triggers the most comments. Yesterday it was ALUMNI, today it's LON. Pretty funny!
Way to go, @Gary!
First look at this puz made me say "I'll never do it, why bother" - but tackling the short downs made it easy.
Had to change Getting nowhere to LEADING NOWHERE - still prefer Getting.
Seeing I rarely drink anything other than water or V8, I got Iced Tea easily but was stumped on Arizona till forced to infer it by downs.
Only other Lon I ever heard of is Lon Chaney - not that I ever saw one of his films.
Nose count is a perfectly valid phrase that has significant historic usage in terms of whippiing votes, census taking, physical counting of those present, and a range of other uses. Just because it wouldn't be used in the hyper-specific context you give doesn't make it or the clue any less valid.
Plus, it's evocative and highly inferable. Good entry, IMO.
lEnter your HEAD MASSAGE-Ooh-la-la! joke here___________________
I still remember being harshly castigated by my 5th Grade teacher for saying that "sod" and "sawed" rhymed. After all these years, I still think they do.
Names, names, names . . . UGH.
Yes, I solved almost completely downs only. Which I don't even do on Mondays
Anonymous: Yes, it does.
My dad was a church pastor. He used to tell his ushers to take attendance by counting ears and dividing by two.
I gerw up and currently live n the South, but had lengthy sojourns in Chicago and Buffalo, and don't think I've ever noticed this difference. I certainly prounce them differently. But it reminded me that I once answered our church phone and the person asked if we had a "lon fate." We never did reach understanding, but I later learned she was asking about a "lawn fete" aka carnival. I think this may be a WNY thing.
Thumbs up for MIE
They’ve assumed the Caught-Cot merger a couple of times in Connections, most recently I think in treating Hawk and Hock as homonyms. It always surprises me to find this in a *New York Times* puzzle because New York is one region *without* the merger. Makes me wonder if the editors are from out of town.
"What is the actual theme?" A stunt puzzle for the sake of a stunt puzzle, fill quality be damned. ODU? ADM? Prefix CENO-? Mad props to the constructor for even attempting this, but a stunt puzzle is a stunt puzzle, not exactly my favorite kind of crossword. And it turned out to be much easier than I was expecting.
In case anybody still wonders at my penchant for having a special “like/meh/dislike/worse/just don’t bother” category for what I call “constructors’ puzzles, this is the poster child. Daniel B (whose surname should not be included in potential wordplay as ID’’d earlier at 7, 31, 56D by our dear friends Roo and Gary G) has created the perfect example of cleverness and tidiness that only a constructor could love - or at least sincerely admire. Sure, probably lots of folks will actually enjoy this solve, so fine. Different strokes etc.
However, and as I commented earlier this week (or recently anyway) like the ever clever Malaika whose Wednesdays we all enjoy, dagnabbit, I. Want. A. Revealer! It’s essential in a Wednesday-themed puzzle.
To be honest, I want entertaining theme puzzles with revealers M, T and W, but we all know I’m one of those old, stuck in their ways, cranky, change-resistant Seniors (I hate that label!!!) so there it is.
This was a marvel of construction. Like
@Roo, I’ve actually wondered if constructing a puzzle with all two word grid spanners in either direction would be possible. Thanks to Daniel, we are now certain that it is. Well done and question answered. Just turns out the puzzle isn’t as successful as I’d hoped when I contemplated the possibility.
The trick today put some hefty strain on the grid. For the record, I did not like having to use HOOSIER singular, but that’s just one nit. SO HOT, does not readily some to mind in response to Oohlala! - or maybe it does, just not easily. And it’s been a loooong time since we’ve seen a reference to “Abie’s Irish Rose.” It was fine for those of us who love old, old, old, Broadway shows. If you do, the 1940’s version on film is lots of fun. It’s as great an example of its genre as is Daniel B’s puzzle a great example of the constructor’s puzzle genre.
I did not dislike the puzzle. I had fun solving it and even more fun studying with admiration the construction. I sincerely admire the way the theme actually works. I’d love to see this theme with a revealer, which would require yet another astonishing feat of cruciverbalistic magic. One with the grid-spanning doubles being so closely related to something from which a reveal emerges. Any takers out there? I admire all of you so much because I’m just a solver.
Congrats Daniel; this was an impressive construction. Thanks to Malaika for a column well done! Love me some Malaika Wednesdays. And just checking, did you grow some tomatoes this year, M? I have a bumper crop for a change.
Utter waste of time and energy. Worst in years.
Yeah. She was unduly harsh, IMO.
It's up to the editors to approve or deny a puzzle. The constructors are just making them, hoping for a yes when submitted. Blame the editors.
At first I looked at this puzzle and groaned at all the names, but then I started at the bottom (BOOLEAN) and worked up and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. So, thank you! I was amused by HEAD MASSAGE and BIC. TIL ODU and remembered ADZE and CENO. Who could forget “I’m in charge” HAIG ?!
I had Lee (grounds = lea meadow) before LON, glad I didn’t think of Moe!
Fun Wednesday puzzle
At first I looked at this puzzle and groaned at all the names, but then I started at the bottom (BOOLEAN) and worked up and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. So, thank you! I was amused by HEAD MASSAGE and BIC. TIL ODU and remembered ADZE and CENO. Who could forget “I’m in charge” HAIG ?!
I had Lee (grounds = lea meadow) before LON, glad I didn’t think of Moe!
Fun Wednesday puzzle
Clearly a hot take with this crowd, but I think, on the whole, Cars is a better movie than Up. The wordless montage at the beginning of Up (and the Oscar-winning Michael Giacchino score, obvi) is better than anything Cars has to offer. No argument there. And the part where Dug says something along the lines of, "I was hiding under the porch because I love you." Also great. But somewhere along the line, Up goes off the rails. It becomes a tedious watch. Cars never hits those highs, but it is a more solid movie throughout. It is consistent thru those 116 minutes, and I'm as surprised as anyone that I hold this opinion. But we have to give credit where it's due!
There was a storyline on Mad Men where Don Draper got a secretary named Dawn and everyone found it hilarious and I thought, “Wait, have the writers of this show ever been to New York?” To see the same mistake repeated in the NEW YORK @?$&$¥# TIMES was ridiculous.
All you "these words don't rhyme/sound the same" people, it's close enough in similar pronunciation to qualify. TON/FUN, close the freak enough
Jazzmanchgo
I wasn’t criticized by teachers for my accent because they talked the same way. However. when out of state relatives visited a neighbor, I thought it so strange how they sounded. (I was about 6). It wasn’t till much later that I realized how strange I sounded!
I now find it strange when people on this blog say things like the puzzle is wrong. Sari doesn’t sound like sorry or LON like lawn. As if only their accent is correct English. The argument that the puzzle should avoid puns like these I understand though I don’t agree. .
Bob Mills
Thanks for naming the university. I had forgotten about that one. Even when I finished the puzzle, I had no idea what the O stood for.
Wanderlust
I think counting noses came up not long ago. It is just an expression. People like variety after all. I never use it myself but I have seen it
Lewis love this comment!
Some of us had considered opinions about her musical work long before there was such a thing as Wikipedia.
She has put out 14 albums, so she is a musician regardless of your knowledge or opinions of her music.
The completed puzzle is really cool to look at with some fun long answers, but it took less than 7 minutes to complete and I got there mostly by starting with all the dull clunky short down fillers. A very boring solving experience for me, but I acknowledge the amazing construction.
On the easy side, but a nice change of pace.
I may be in the minority but I thought it was fun - it took me a second or two to understand what all those dashes represented - but when I did I had a nice time figuring out what they indicated. A couple of the 3 letters answers helped as well. I am not a crossword creator so it never occurred to me that this would be difficult - just the opposite actually; there are so many two word phrases to choose from. But in any case and enjoyable - and very easy - Wednesday
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