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Full of vivid detail, as memory / THU 9-24-26 / The two most valuable Scrabble tiles / Slang for an Italian dish / "Same here," more stiffly / From one tone to the next adjacent tone, in music / American architect who invented Scrabble while unemployed during the Great Depression / Scrabble's name prior to its acquisition by James Brunot in 1948 / Verizon competitor, informally
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Constructor: Jeff Stillman
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (the "Medium" is solely for the theme trivia)
Theme answers:
- ALFRED BUTTS (21A: American architect who invented Scrabble while unemployed during the Great Depression)
- CRISS-CROSS WORDS (37A: Scrabble's name prior to its acquisition by James Brunot in 1948)
- FIFTY POINTS (53A: Bonus score for a bingo (using all seven of one's tiles) in Scrabble)
- 'ZA (1A: Slang for an Italian dish ... or along with QI, the highest-value two-letter word in Scrabble)
- [two blank squares] (67A: The two most valuable Scrabble tiles)
"BLANK" square crosses:
- WENT [BLANK] (51D: Forgot what you intended to say)
- LEFT [BLANK] (52D: Didn't fill in, as a field on an application)
adj.Of, relating to, or marked by extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall of visual images. (thefreedictionary.com)
Eidetic memory (/aɪˈdɛtɪk/ eye-DET-ik), also known as photographic memory and total recall, is the alleged ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only once and without using a mnemonic device.
Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably, they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to see an object for a few minutes after it is no longer present and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail. When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and is generally not found in adults, while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist.
The term eidetic comes from the Greek word εἶδος (pronounced [êːdos], eidos) "visible form".
• • •
Nothing to slow you down today besides the trivia, and maybe a couple of the longer answers I already mentioned. EIDETIC is ... not exactly an everyday word. I had seen it before, somewhere (maybe a crossword? ... yes, this is the fourth appearance in the Shortz Era). STEPWISE was totally new to me (15D: From one tone to the next adjacent tone, in music). I just built it from the crosses, and inferred the -WISE part. Obscure to me, but maybe common to music folks, I don't know. Aside from the two-letter themers and the blank squares, the only things that gave me pleasure today were WET NOSE (who's a good buddy!?) and WINGSPAN (though ... more birds, less Howard Hughes, please). I also liked the clue on SAMSON (24D: Biblical figure with a notoriously bad hair day?). Oh, and ALFRED BUTTS made me laugh, the way "BUTTS" might make a 10-year-old laugh. This 10-year-old specifically:
Bullets:
- 3D: Ones who have trouble finishing sentences? (ESCAPEES) — I didn't love the wordplay here at first, since you escape because you want to be free, not because you are unable to finish your sentence (as the wording of the clue seems to imply). But I've since warmed to the clue. Perhaps because there was so little to keep me warm today.
- 10D: Belmont entry (COLT) — this threw me, since other kinds of horses (geldings, fillies) can race at the Belmont. I needed the "O" from COLT to get "AS DO I" (ugh), which could just as easily have been "AS AM I" (16A: "Same here," more stiffly).
- 31D: Hamburger connection? (UND) — UND = "and" in German. "And" is a "connecting" word (aka a conjunction).
- 44D: Straight-horned antelopes (ORYXES) — you know you've been solving crosswords way, way too long when you can actually think of two six-letter plural antelopes that start with OR-. Nearly twenty years ago, in the first week of this blog's existence, I discovered there was an antelope called the ORIBI. And so, today: ORIBIS! Back in 2006, my suggestion that ORIBI was perhaps not a well-known word inspired a reader named "grandpamike" to comment "this blog is just a bad idea imho." Sadly, grandpamike seems to have deleted his comment in the intervening two decades; happily, I seem to have taken a screenshot:
 |
| [ORIBI: in my defense, those horns are pretty straight] |
That's all for today. This blog turns 20 tomorrow. Hope to see you then.
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132 comments:
Happy 20th anniversary, @Rex!!
Easy, but boring. I'm not a big Scrabble fan but even if I were I wouldn't really care about most of the theme trivia.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
For "make an impression" at 3A I had dent before ETCH.
My 18A traction enhancer was a Chain before it was a CLEAT.
WOEs:
STEPWISE at 15D.
No clue about ALFRED BUTTS (21A).
I got the WTA part of the 28A tennis TOUR from crosses.
Didn't know about CRISS CROSSWORDS at 37A.
Speaking of plurals, when is it SOLI and when SOLOS?
happy anniversary Rex - the puzzle honors some wonderful people who did amazing things. scrabble is a crossword game without clues. .thought it was ingenious making the story of scrabble into a crossword puzzle - has this been done before? whatever the case thanks for your blog we all love and appreciate it.
The 1A clue defines a tile's "value" as point value, but the 67A clue applies "valuable" to tiles that have zero point value. Maddening.
Joyless puzzle. Good write-up, though.
Hey All !
20 year blog. Who knew Blogger would still be in existence? Give yourself FIFTY POINTS.
Liked the puz. A tribute to Scrabble, words fine. Neat little [BLANK][BLANK] flourish at the end. I often watch Scrabble matches on You Tube, some of the words are wacky, especially the Collins Dictionary ones. I fast forward through the players-thinking parts.
Thankfully the Butts didn't name their kid Harry.
There is also a Brent Butt, who created the quite funny Canadian TV show "Corner Gas". Older show, but worth watching.
Time to get my BUTT out of here. Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Another tribute puzzle this week? I love crosswords and words in general - this game not so much.
How many points to I get for finding S U C K S?
Greg Brown
happy rexiversary! i’ve loved this blog since finding it a couple years back! thanks for the time and thought you put into the puzzle every day!
Unlike Conrad, I am a (fairly) big Scrabble fan, but I hated this puzzle, for all the reasons I generally dislike tribute puzzles, plus the dreary, HOARY fill.
When Mrs. Freude and I play by our house rules, ZA is not a legitimate word. But ZE, a pronoun used by some folks we know, is.
STEPWISE is a pretty common musical term. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a mostly stepwise melody, as is Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” theme (a personal favorite).
Rex, I hope grandpamike figured out that he can just read this blog a week later than the rest of us. Of course, he can’t participate in the discussion that way, but that may be no great loss.
Remember that Stevie Wonder puzzle we had on Tuesday? Now, that was a sweet puzzle!
Pretty easy for a Thursday. For the biblical bad hair day, my brain went to Absalom, which would not fit (his hair got stuck in a tree and he hung there for a while as easy prey and was killed), but I liked it better than SAMSON.
Glad you kept writing the blog, Rex, grampamike notwithstanding. To his point, as a newer solver myself, I’ve always appreciated that you acknowledge things you know only through crosswords. I was pretty baffled at ORYXES and EIDETIC.
Fan of Scrabble®—not of this puzzle. ★
Ditto thanks for this blog and all the folks that contribute. I DNF’d on that dratted straight-horned antelope but was OK with that. The distinction made between photographic and eidetic memory was the first I heard of it. And possibly incorrect, or maybe it’s possible to have both. I have one friend who when watching football on TV can tell you in detail the movements of each lineman on both sides of the ball after it’s snapped, and after reading a book once can tell you even the footnotes on each page. I’ve met others with similar abilities, all of whom are very low-key personalities. The human mind is capable of amazing things.
So I don’t want to pile on. More and more I admire the concept or the idea even if the execution is rough simply because I have never created a crossword puzzle and am too intimidated to try. That said I kind of sighed when I looked at the empty grid. I kind of saw my future and just decided to enjoy what I could. What bothered me was STEPWISE which could have been clued as any adjacent step progression. To the best of my knowledge the clue is commonly known as HALF TONE, HALF STEP, SEMI-TONE. I have never heard it referred to as STEPISE. And yes the plural of SOLO is SOLI. Liked EIDETIC, ONCLE, and LORAX.
I didn't know it was possible to make a Scrabble-themed puzzle that has less of a point than the "impossible Scrabble words" one (Tuesday January 26th 2021), which at the very least had a bunch of Zs (it also had STRESSLESSNESS and it wasn't a good puzzle overall, but still).
Also, Rex makes a great point about the fill. Erik Agard's puzzle from Tuesday had more theme material AND 6-7-8 stacks right next to two of the themers, and it was much cleaner than today's grid (where the only serious constraint is the pair of BLANKs back to back). UND? ONCLE? I would understand ORYXES if it had to cross two themers, but here... not so much.
Was not sure whether to leave the squares blank or enter blank as a rebus. Either both were accepted or I guessed right.
My favorite thing in the puzzle was MEAT PIE. Sounds so innocuous.
@Rex: how do you still have that screenshot??? And somewhere you can find it? I'm impressed. You are an academic, so I supposed you have a system.
My mind also went straight to Seymour Butts, and I giggled.
Yes to STEPWISE being familiar to music folks. Usually we refer to half steps and whole steps, but a melody or a sequence can proceed STEPWISE, i.e. without skips.
Happy twentieth anniversary! Grampamike can go blow his ill wind. This blog is highly entertaining and certainly a part of my daily routine. Thank you, and here’s to another 20!
Ha ha, the famous novel "Under the Bleachers"!
Highlights for me were the moment I realized EIDETIC, a word I’ve never heard of, was actually correct, and the lovely two-blank surprise ending.
I did check out some other Scrabble themed crosswords, and loved one by Nancy Salomon that was in the New York Sun in 2008. The revealer, SCRABBLE, was at 61-across. My two favorite clue/answers were:
[Basic necessities for a game of 61-across] for ROOM AND BOARD.
[Lucky thing in 61-across] for DRAWING A BLANK.
Today there were a couple of lovely serendipities – the rare-in-crosswords five letter palindrome (SOLOS), and the cross of CLEFT and CLEAT.
Thanks for reminding me of an adored pastime of mine, Jeff, and teaching me a bit of its history. Combining the two wordplay activities hit my happy button!
Are the blank tiles really the most valuable tiles? Versatile, sure. But you don’t get any points from them.
I was wondering if the letter distribution in the puzzle was the same as that in a full set of scrabble tiles including the two blanks. Makes it more of a constructor-y show off feat and adds nothing to the solving experience but it’d be a slightly fun bonus. And maybe explain all the additional dull fill….
I'm surprised no one has commented on the change in how the cursor looked as you moved about the puzzle, which I found distracting and am hoping was a one-day thing.
I briefly held onto the theory that this puzzle had every letter appear in proportion to their distribution as Scrabble tiles (thanks to the single Z and X and the two blanks), but that theory was fortuitously falsified by the next letter I checked, W
I enjoyed it, but to each their own
I think this puzzle deserves a third star. We know Rex does not love the Scrabbles, but that doesn't mean it's a bad theme or a bad puzzle. It wasn't a five-star, either, but it was well made and the fill was NOT that bad. Theme-dense and architecturally interesting with those corners.
I feel bad for the constructor, who happened to get a tribute puzzle accepted only to have it run after yesterday’s truly stellar effort. It’s a bit of a shame since yesterday’s grid could have easily been published on the actual anniversary (next Monday or Tuesday) instead of yesterday, which would have allowed this one to be judged more on its own merits. A missed opportunity for Mr. Shortz to show off some (big picture) editor’s chops there, but alas, it was not in the cards.
Rex and others have pointed out the lowlights in this one. The crosses were pretty trustworthy, and Ms. Russo must be fairly well known (because I recognize her name, lol) - but that whole south central section with ORYXES, EIDETIC, ONCLE, RUSSO and the Spruce Goose looks like, well, it looks like something the NYT crossword puzzle might do.
20, wow. I think I’ve probably been here for at least 15. I liked today’s write up much more than I liked the puzzle. Please come back grandpamike! It would be so eidetic!
An ill wind that blows no good is actually an oboe.
Fun puzzle, especially figuring out the SE corner was just two blanks! Very easy for me except the mid-north and NE corners--everything that depended on figuring out ALFREDBUTTS' name. No idea. Saw the DA coming out of the NE and somehow couldn't think of LAMBDA for the longest time... ASDOI could have been ASAMI. LEECH could have been MOOCH. So I stared at those entries for quite a while, finally LAMBDA came to mind and the rest worked out. When I think of a COLT I think of a little baby horse.... I guess that i a foal. a COLT is a 1 year old (actually anything < 4 years old and not "fixed" is a COLT according to Mr. Google). *** from me, liked it a lot more than @REX. I love scrabble conceptually but I really stink at it! Funny how I'm reasonably good at crosswords but can't do scrabble at all (way way too slow for anyone to play with me). But I enjoyed this puzzle, and learned who invented Scrabble!!! Thanks, Jeff! : )
alternate clue for 44D..... "straight horned antelopes with longer horns than the other straight horned antelope which starts with the same two letters". Or how about "Straight horned antelopes with the higher scrabble score than the other straight-horned antelopes which start with the same two letters"!!!!!
Its taken me 20 years to graduate from Monday's only to doing every daily puzzle. An inspiration that kept me persevering was Rex's blog. So many times I just didn't get the theme or trick, but I kept learning from this blog. Thank you, Rex!!!!
I liked the use of the blank tiles. I thought that was pretty neat. But I do agree the fill was pretty boring. Except for the part that was annoying tennis trivia. I guess people are supposed to know that the “WTA Tour” (which I’ve never heard of but I can guess is tennis related) is known as a ‘circuit’? Even looking at the athlete’s Wikipedia page, the word circuit doesn’t appear once. I had to fight for every single letter through the crosses.
According to the Standard Dictionary of Italianate Loanwords, it’s SOLI when the constructor needs to fill 4 boxes, SOLOS when she’s filling 5. SOLOES is an obscure variant for emergencies.
I did notice that too! I thought there it might be because there were animations that were tied to the puzzle, but that wasn’t the case.
Happy 20th Anniversary keep on keepin on!
Starting with ZA does not bode well 🤦🏻♀️
Second appearance this week of baseball Hall of Famer Rod CAW RUE.
Happy 20th! Love the grandpamike comment! It's to your credit, RP, that you cherish it. My favorite student evaluations from my teaching years were:
1. Prof. L thinks he's so smart and funny, but actually he is a fat jerk.
2. Based on this course I've decided to become a nun.
I’ve been reading this blog for 20 years, and I stand by what I said.
2 2-letter entries + 2 empty squares suffice for a thursday?!? 2 stars is 1 too many.
Interestingly, I noted that right away, but by the time I finished I wasn't seeing it anymore
A big sticking point in 34 years of marriage is that my wife is an avid Scrabble fan and I am most certainly not. There is much respect for seeing the game played well, but I get very little joy out of it. Sitting and waiting for someone to come up with either something astounding or, more often, something like... I don't know, "tad", is not my idea of fun. My wife, god bless her, can take 20 minutes for her turn, just not my cuppa. I play on her birthday and anniversaries. Fortunately, my younger son is quite good and likes the game well enough to spar with her on a semi-regular basis. My love of crosswords just does not transfer to scrabble - all this is a Hugh thing, you like what you like.
With all that... my disinterest in the scrabble was not a factor in my solving experience today. I share much of @rex's feelings but liked it much better than he did.
While I knew one bit of trivia, FIFTYPOINTS, the inventor and original name were unknowns. *But*....you gotta admit CRISSCROSSWORDS is fun to say and it's a pretty neat spanner. I'd say the same for ALFREDBUTTS (though not a spanner), poor guy must have had some trouble in middle school. Like @Rex and others, Bart Simpson immediately came to mind. Yeah, that gives you an idea of when my maturity as an adult peaked.
It started out pretty interesting with the two-letter ZA and I thought, hmm... something really cool is gonna happen here. Alas, not much else had any real sparkle other than what I mentioned above. The two blanks in the SE were kinda interesting and easy to get but a bit anticlimactic.
I knew EIDETIC simply from watching "Big Bang Theory", again, my maturity as stated above. But that's some nice fill.
I had several hold-ups. I totally butchered WTATOUR. I was thinking U.S. Women's Tennis Org or something like that and threw those initials down - major snafu. Crosses like STEPWISE and LAMBDA didn't come easily so I was stuck there for a while. The NW was also very, very thorny for me. Tried ASAMI, ASIAM and threw down MARE for the Belmont thing. I thought a cat fight sound had to be some sort of version of "meow" so I stuck and M in 11D. So all kinds of trouble there until LEECHES hit me. But this difficulty is all "fair game" for a Thursday, and I welcome the late week work.
Thank you Jeff! This was interesting. I am going to print it out and give it to my wife, I know she'll appreciate it and if you're the one who makes her happy today, I'm happy!
Wow! 20 years tomorrow!! Well, I have the day off as the next fall Jewish Holiday starts tomorrow night. I think I'll make part of the day a Rex Parker Does The New York Times Crossword celebration... I'll think of something cool to do...
At least I learned eidetic. No 🎈for me.
I wondered about the darkened squares at first, but then realized they simulate Scrabble tiles. Clever.
Hi Twangster! Check out yesterday's comments. I posted about the new look of the NYT app yesterday (first day I saw it) around 3:00 pm, and another person commented that evening that they came to Rexword specifically to see if anyone else had posted about it.
So yes, now at least three of us have noticed it, but like you I was surprised at the lack of commenting on it. I know Rex uses an app other than NYT to solve, and from comments I believe many others here do as well (and there are a few paper solvers too), which could explain the lack of interest—if they're not using the NYT app, they didn't see anything change!
I thought today's puzzle was interesting and fun.
I'm suddenly getting a dark highlight around the selected square on the puzzle. Solving on Times site on a Mac. Anyone know if this is some awful new feature or if I have an issue with a setting?
Enjoyed this a lot. Didn't know Butts. Grandpamike wants you to get over the Stevie Wonder puzzle. This one was actually more fun to fill.
A real missed opportunity to not clue WINGSPAN as the award-winning, best-selling board game. In a board game themed puzzle no less!
Good one, @mmorgan. "Only" about three years for me, but entertaining, educational and enjoyable.
We in the community (and maybe Rex too) will never know if grampamike has made a return appearance (sharing the name "anonymous"), but that would be an interesting development.
Advice, sir...life's too short; find a new hobby. (Sent anonymously to @grandpamike).
I've read Rex, but not the comments, because I'm running late. I'll come back later, I promise!
I don't know how many Scrabble tiles there are, and I'm too lazy to count the fetters in the puzzle, but when I saw two BLANKs, one Z, and one Q I thought maybe each letter was going to appear with its proper Scrabble frequency--which would have made it kind of a super pangram. But no, there's no J -- that's as far as I got in checking. That speculation was prompted by the ridiculous crossing of LORAX & ORYXES; I thought the constructor must really need the X to do that. Maybe it was the EDITor's clue, but ORYX horns curve backward, sometimes quite a bit, so I wouldn't call them straight. But I couldn't remember the ORibiS, so I put in the right answer.
I thought Rex would go off on RES, an outrageous POC. C'mon, let's see you use it in a sentence. Could there be a better clue? RES ipsa loquitur!
I did like WINGSPAN, and I was fine with the Spruce Goose as a clue. I think the nickname is meant to be mocking it, so it is not celebrating Mr. Hughes, any more than ordering the tide not to come in celebrates King Cnut.
Triple dirty word, anywhere on the board, Scrabble. A fun variation.
Figured the rating might turn on Rex's enthusiasm (or not) for Scrabble, but the write-up, and puzzle itself, goes (downhill) beyond that.
NW corner began with the hideous look of ZA over ERR over ROE over OAT. Got me off on the wrong foot, as while I used to (more than lately) enjoy playing Scrabble, it's with a real (i.e., Merriam-Webster) dictionary, not an official Scrabble version with all its non-words (sorry, including "ZA"). Bah!
Agree with another commenter that the blanks are valuable in their versatility, apart from point value. To work with this theme, that's a cluing mistake.
Loved the clues for both SAMSON and ESCAPEES, like and more than Rex, respectively. Agree with Rex re why a decent answer like WINGSPAN had to be clued with that recluse and not a real bird, maybe even a (non-spruce) goose.
The two blanks at the bottom were a nice touch, getting the "happy music" without entering any letters, but unfortunately didn't redeem the solve.
“Harry Butts.” I haven’t had a good sixth-grade snicker like that in years. You knocked it out of the park today, Roo! Have a good one
Seymour. 🤭 I had forgotten that one.
Fun start for me as our go-to pizza joint in college was Zaza's.. Who wan't to go to Zaza's for a ZA? Good times.
No real problems, had TREAD before CLEAT and ASAMI before ADOI which slowed things dwon. Never heard of Mr. BUTTS but easy from crosses. In my long career with music I haven't run into STEPWISE and thought it might be a STEPRISE, but WTA fixed that.
Today's highlight was discovering that I shared a kealoa experience with OFL on the ORYX ORIBI answer. Happy 20th, BTW, and thanks for all the fun.
Oh, and every time I see EIDETIC I plan to look it up, and don't , so it's nice to get a definition,
OK Thursday if you're into Scrabble, JS, If you're not, Just So-so. Thanks for a modicum of fun at least.
Thanks for everyone's comments. I'm so curious as to why they made this change, when it was fine to begin with. All I can think of is that it somehow saves money.
I'm thinking of switching from my Macbook to my phone, at least for Monday through Thursday.
Me too, Lynn. I liked the trivia. I enjoy a game of Scrabble now and then—and while I of course see the link to crosswords, I didn’t realize that the game was even originally named after them.
Perhaps if Stevie Wonder had been a scrabble aficionado, the puzzle would’ve gotten three stars. :)
easiest thursday in a while for me
Whenever I see AROAR in a puzzle, I picture Sam Ezersky, whose office is, in my mind, next to Will Shortz' office, shouting "That's not a word! At least have the clue say [Non-word meaning cheering wildly]". To which WS replies "Eat OLEOE and die, Ezersky"!
I'm tired of the Type A personalities getting all the publicity. Nice to see a shout out to us TYPEDs.
Foot doctors are known to often have sexual liaisons while addressing conferences. These are known as Podiatrists PODIA Trysts. And speaking of PODIA, is this how one refers to multiple PODs of seals?
Oddly, I was just talking to GRANDPAMIKE yesterday. I said "Grand Pam, you're as awesome as ever. And how's. Mr. Ike?"
I like the occasional puzzle that just reveals a bunch of obscure facts, and todays's was one of those. Admittedly not an Erik Agard-like effort, but still lots of fun for me. Thanks, Jeff Stillman.
Yeah, I had Q and Z there (the two ten-point letters, also referenced in 1 across, so I took that as an intended symmetry) and thought WENTQ must be slang I didn’t know for went quiet or, then LEFTZ was maybe left zero? I even tried putting in QUIET and ZERO as rebuses. Had to come here to get to the blanks.
I always thought the "ill wind..." was the piccolo. The oboe makes a lovely sound.
🤣
Congrats on the 20th! Yes, musicians use the word “stepwise”. Still the puzzle was no fun. Good review, Rex.
So many kealoas today: cleat / TREAD, foal / COLT, agree / AS DO I
De gustibus non est disputandum
I guess I think of versatility as being valuable. For instance, if you are left at the end of Scrabble with a Z, X, or Q…the point value ends up not valuable.
20 years (and counting!) What an achievement! I have learned so much from this blog, some incredibly useful, some not so much. Thanks to you Michael, and here's to the next 20!
Number of Days Without the Use of the Word Arbitrary: 0
Stefan Fatsis's book about competitive Scrabbling, Word Freak, was discussed on the blog at some point, so I picked up a copy. He's a good writer, but the pursuit he was describing was so dull that I put it down. He goes into the origin of the game, so the creator and original name were familiar to me. If not for that, the solve would have been truly bleak. Those are not interesting bits of trivia to me, and solving for them would have just led to a "drink your Ovaltine" moment. I agree with others that the two blank squares were not enough to elevate this to a Thursday.
To look on the bright side, I just got off a cruise where they printed a syndicated puzzle each day. I did them each day, but they were terrible. Full of random trivia, obscure place names, niche abbreviations that were from deep within technical jargon (which were inconsistently signaled as abbreviations in the clues), stale ye olde crosswordese, etc. It made me thankful that even on a bad day, the NYT is so much better.
Wow. There is a platform where you use a cursor to navigate through the puzzle? Twangster, you may find an iPad a better option…it “presents” much more than my phone does (I HATE using my phone to do the puzzle).
I didn’t love the puzzle but suppose I liked it better than RP did. As I was solving, I kept thinking how much he was going to hate it because Scrabble, but he was actually fairly diplomatic. All I can say about @grandpamike is that I hope he eventually got over his bad mood and found some joy in life. On the other hand, I’m happy to find the blog commentary AROAR with joy and witty repartee, particularly about the heritage of a certain Mr. BUTTS. I couldn’t help but stifle a few giggles along the way.
The puzzle seemed easy for a Thursday except for the Scrabble part. I’m familiar with the basic concept, of course but know ZERO about the technicalities or history of the game. Also didn’t know ONCLE, EIDETIC, ORYXES or STEPWISE. Can’t say I ever heard anyone refer to pizza with that expression, but I thought ZA and the two blank squares were the nicest parts of the grid.
The puzzle made me wonder about how Scrabble became the name. A google search revealed it was originally called Lexiko before CRISS CROSS WORDS. Then in 1948, Alfred’s business partner, James Brunot, bought the full rights to the game and renamed it. He chose Scrabble because he felt it best described how players frantically search through their minds and letter tiles. The word itself comes from an old Dutch word, schrabbelen, meaning to scrape or scratch.
James was definitely onto something big. It wasn’t long before he was unable to meet the demand and was forced to sell. In 1952, Selchow and Righter purchased the rights and in only its second year, sold 4 million sets. Like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, Selchow had previously rejected the game, with its president commenting when she first saw it: “It's a nice little game. It will sell well in bookstores.”
Haha! When you talk about the Scrabble it reminds me of WHY I quit playing Scrabble with my husband…SO slow but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good. These days I’d just say…hey, I’m going to look at my email or read a book while it’s your turn. I also tend to think like you about COLT but I knew it couldn’t be foal.
Haha! When you talk about the Scrabble it reminds me of WHY I quit playing Scrabble with my husband…SO slow but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good. These days I’d just say…hey, I’m going to look at my email or read a book while it’s your turn. I also tend to think like you about COLT but I knew it couldn’t be foal.
Yes -- some great characters on Corner Gas. Thanks for the reminder.
Car Talk's swimsuit designer was C. Bigby Hinds.
Haha! Your wife, Rick Sacra, and my husband sound like they’d be a great Scrabble trio! Many times I just wanted to shout “just put down a word…any word!”
I'm seriously considering canceling my games subscription if they don't get rid of the ugly yellow cursor. I thought it had something to do with this specific puzzle but I went to finish one from 2008 and it's the same. Why do they feel the need to mess up something that was working just fine? As if making the puzzles "accessible" wasn't bad enough.
Hand up for thinking the puzzle deserved more than two stars but also thought Rex made some good points, and of course I always like another link to Songs in the Key of Life. And unlike some here…due to Rex TIL oribi. Oddly, ORYXES was my second choice after I had put in OkapiS and found it didn’t work. And this is a segue to recommend Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood if you like -not really depressing- dystopian world fiction.
This also reminded me of a girl a class ahead of me whose last name was Butts, and, I’m happy to say that she ended up getting through high school with her ego and dignity intact.
See the earlier comments on this.
I use STEPWISE all the time teaching horn lessons as part of teaching students to look for patterns. The horn’s greatest challenge is the high number of possible notes produced with any given fingering, hence the importance of having a good EAR. Identifying patterns makes it easier for the ear to predict what the next notes will sound like.
I enjoyed CRISSCROSSWORDS, WETNOSE + GROWL & HISS, MEATPIE, and the cheeky blank squares. RES, TASE and RETAG did not thrill.
Hand up for knowing EIDETIC from Sheldon on Big Bang (Hi, @Hugh); and WTATOUR went in without crosses for this tennis fan. (I bet it did for our friend @Nancy, too.) Speaking of tennis, the recent US Open Women’s Champion Elena Rybakina is a joy to watch.
So, while I wholeheartedly disagree with @grandpamike that this blog is a bad idea or that it shouldn’t appear on the day of the puzzle, I can sympathize with his defense of words that may not be familiar to everyone. However, going back and actually reading @Rex’s comments from that day, I didn’t get the impression that OFL was actually making the “criticism that some of these words are not familiar to all people generally.” Rather he seemed to be pointing out how his own lack of familiarity affected his solving experience.
Here are the only vaguely critical-sounding points:
“Solving this puzzle was not a pleasant experience (for which I can't really blame its constructor, Mr. Chisholm). The puzzle itself is actually pretty clever, yet somehow solving it felt like slogging through mud. Lots of foreign words or names and odd spellings… this puzzle left me on shaky footing, bouncing all over the place trying to get intersecting words. Maybe if I stopped timing myself I'd enjoy the puzzle more.” …
“12D: Bloody Mary's daughter in "South Pacific" (Liat) (I'm sure; like that's a name. Come on!)
22D: Actor Fröbe of "Goldfinger" (Gert) (seriously, you're killing me)
25D: Small African antelope (oribi)
These are all good examples of how you don't actually have to know all the answers to complete the puzzle.”
Throughout his comments he specifies it’s his personal reaction to names and words he doesn’t know. Nothing “unfair” about that at all, gramps.
It really is time to hit that PayPal button again. Keep up the good work, @Rex. If I don’t make it back tomorrow congrats on the anniversary!
Who says "'ZA"? Ever? Where? I draw a blank.
I knew I was in for it when the opening word was ZA :(
Happy Anniversary Rex!
I'm a lifelong Scrabble fan who watches a lot of competitive Scrabble, and I STILL didn't really enjoy this puzzle.
Noticed it last night on PC. I hate it.
And there's Mr. Butts, the talking cigarette spokesperson for the tobacco industry in Doonesbury.
My friend and I play Scrabble whenever I'm up at her cabin - she's ruthless and I've become so. She plays with her cousins who are more ruthless than I am, and they accept 'ZA as a two-letter Z word. At the cabin, we've always played that if it's in the M-W dictionary, circa 1998 edition, and it's not slang or proper, it's legit. 'ZA is not in the dictionary and to me it's pure slang. But my friend wants to add 'ZA to our list of acceptable words. Goodness knows when she'll want to accept QI (huh?) (And how does she always manage to find a triple-letter square on which to place those high value tiles?)
I disagree that the BLANK tiles are the most valuable. Yes, they're invaluable when you have the Q, can't get a U and the blank is there to fill its place. But I was expecting one of those squares to be an S. There's some added value because you can use it to add on to a previously entered word, add your own word and get all of those lovely points. BLANKs, pointless.
So Rex points out all of the less than stellar fill in today's grid but I enjoyed it more than Tuesday's Stevie Wonder tribute. Stevie's great, for certain, but I'm not a mega-fan so...
Jeff Stillman, thanks for scrabbling my crossword. I was expecting a pangram but I didn't detect a V. I may have missed it.
Yes. A blank can help you get that sweet fifty point bonus or get the most out of a Z or F. Best tiles to draw, beyond question.
I’ve had some good giggles from the blog today but your Ezersky/Shortz scenario has me rolling. Perfection! 👌
Think you were too tough on this unique Scrabble tribute and too over the top on the Stevie Wonder puzzle.
About the latter, Songs in the Key Of Life was great, but so was the trilogy of Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness First Finale that preceded the double album.
Think it may be a matter of when we came of age (as are all the Lil ___ and BTS answers us old farts have to contend with) but if you haven’t listened to them, please do so.
Congrats on 20th - was listening to Stevie’s He’s Misstra Know-it-all and thought of you. But in a good way, of course. Your blog makes even the mundane Mondays more enjoyable!
Andrew (with Diva)
For some reason I was able to print out this puzzle on Wednesday, only to eventually realize it was supposed to be a Thursday puzzle. With no rebus or tricks?
I did have to look up ALFRED. I liked the clue for ESCAPEES, and enjoyed revisiting EIDETIC, and learning CRISSCROSSWORDS. Rex, I truly appreciate your wonderful blog, thank you.
Eidetic was used deveral
Yomes on Tge Bog Bang Theory. If I recall correctly slways by Sheldon referreing to his own memory.
When I was first married, we lived in a log cabin in extremely remote northwest Montana without any television or neighbors. During that time we discovered pretty much every two-person card game in existence. We tried Scrabble, too, but we just couldn’t do it. My husband took so long with each move that I could’ve written an opera while waiting. And when we tried using a timer it just stressed him out too much.
Really I don’t think I liked the competition aspect of it either. For me, wordplay is more a relaxed exploration of language, more for delightful discovery and less to see who’s better at it.
Ze? Really? Oh boy! Or as ze says, oh girl.
Love the joke answer, but here’s a serious answer (in orchestral music): solo is played by one person, a soli is a (singular) solo-like passage played by a group of people (e.g. the cellos in the opening of William Tell). Solos is the plural of solo. The plural of soli is probably solis, but I’ve never heard that used.
They're valuable because of what they allow you to do, e.g., add an S to an existing word on the grid to make it plural and then build up or down to make a second word., giving you a two-word score.
Per yesterday's puzzle, it is also the "sprightly companion".
I, too, found the NW corner a bit disappointing, but the delightful SW corner {BLANK, BLANK] soon made up for it. I laughed out loud! And in between I learned some fun Scrabble trivia.
The puzzle went very fast for me, despite my not knowing EIDETIC, which I doubted was right, but had to be! I enjoyed learning that word and I also thought the clue for ESCAPEES was pretty great. So thank you, Jeff Stillman, for a fun puzzle...and of course, thank you, Rex, for not listening to grumpy grandpa. Here's to 20 more years.
For me, the best part of an otherwise dull theme was the double-meaning play on "valuable" for the first and last Acrosses. I also enjoyed the cross of the LORAX with the ORYX, WINGSPAN, and SNAP over GROWL.
Agree on both counts
Even though I didn’t know ALFREDBUTTS or CRISSCROSSWORDS, I got my fastest ever Thursday time on this puzzle.
Interestin Scrabble trivia. BUTTS dude and CRISSCROSSWORDS name of olde were no-knows, and FIFTYPOINTS was a gimme [cuz PuzEatinSpouse & m&e have played Scrabble several times].
Thought the puzfillins were ok. Shoot, if y'all saw some of the fillins we've had on our Scrabble game boards ... [we don't allow challenges -- makes the game much more harlarious].
staff weeject picks: ZA & blank-blank. Two-letter xword fill! Luv it. Makes my runtpuzs feel slightly more legally xword-acceptable. Now, if they'd only institute some double-?-marker clues ... [They've already used the runt-roll technique, in some of their puzthemes, so that's been covered.]
some fave stuff: WETNOSE & its poochy clue. ESCAPEES clue. WINGSPAN & its clue. Havin a new word to use in future Scrabble outins [EIDETIC]. That's cited, i.e., backwards, btw.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Stillman dude. A mighty versa-tile solvequest. Let's make ZA!
Masked & Anonymo6Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
p.p.s.s.
20 years of @RP! Congratz! Not sure how long M&A has dwelt here ... maybe 16-17 years worth? Anyhoo, it's sure been a fun ride. sooo ... Thanx, for all yer hard work, bloggin it!
It's a little hard to describe, but before they loused it up, it wasn't really a cursor ... you just moved elegantly from one box to the next. Now you see a weird square outlining the box. I've seen this before on other papers' puzzles (Wapo I think?), so maybe they switched to different, cheaper software.
Nothing to say about the puzzle.
I just finished watching the excellent Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway. The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber are widely considered his best short stories. I didn't remember it, so I reread Macomber last night. Terrific. Robert Wilson, the white hunter, is one of the most fascinating characters in American fiction.
The oboe is an ill wind that no one blows good.
For years my morning routine has been coffee + NYTimes Crossword + Rexwordpuzzle. Nearly every day without fail. I adore you and your site. Happy anniversary!
No J? No W? Why do a Scrabble theme puzzle and leave out letters? Where's the Scrabble-****ing Rex loves?
Anyone else getting a weird box around the highlighted letter on the nyt website? I first thought it was somehow scrabble related (to look like a tile, maybe?) But just hit the midi and same thing. It's very odd - the box is big enough that it partly obscures the adjacent letters, ugh. Will comment on wordplay...
Though the puzz was, um, boring, sorry.
Mrs. Freude and I used to be such slow Scrabble players that we drove each other nuts. So we borrowed a one-minute timer from some other game and developed Speed Scrabble. Now we don’t need the timer. We just play with nine tiles on the rack instead of the regulation seven—a faster game and more interesting words (none of which is ZA).
Easy which is surprising because I don’t play scrabble and am only vaguely familiar with the rules. Plus, there were quite a few WOEs - ALFRED BUTTS, CRISS CROSS WORDS, FIFTY POINTS, and STEP WISE.
Fortunately I had no erasures.
Liked it a tiny bit more than @Rex (happy anniversary) did.
Re slow Scrabble players, I play Lexulous (Words With Friends alternative) with my sister and her boyfriend. She can take several days to play a word; he takes a few minutes and regularly scores 60+ points. That's an advantage of playing online; they can take as long as they want.
I was really annoyed that answer wasn’t SEMITONE. Had me stuck in the area for a while.
@Beezer and @Yat - What you both said!! Let's get the spouses together and three of us can go somewhere and do crosswords 😊. @Yat, agree on the competitive nature of scrabble, not for me when it comes to words and word play...
Yeesh another tribute puzzle! Lucky for me that I'm a Scrabble fan so the theme answers were a bit fun. But yeah the rest of the grid was a bit rough.
I never thought to try leaving the last 2 squares blank! So I typed in [BLANK] twice as a rebus. Darn it.
Happy 20th Rex!!! I LOVE this blog. I’m a better solver because of you. Here’s to 20 (at least) more!🥂
Good to know Rex was already Rex, and (some) commenters were already complaining, in the first week :) HAPPY ANNIVERSARY and THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
Nice one!
The outline of the selected square was thicker than usual, and would block part of the letter in adjacent squares. Odd.
From an age 82 formerly fairly speedy solver now a pretty slow one who often needs to resort to Autocorrect to solve late week puzzles, longtime reader of your blog, Rex, you’ve brought daily smattering of lively erudition into my life for 20 years. Ditto many of you regular commenters. I credit you all with keeping the old synapses snapping as well as they do, dear Dr Rex and you members of his comment team.
I think it's pretty valuable to get a blank that can be used as any letter!
I was hoping that was the case because it would have been really cool, but there are 100 tiles in a scrabble set and 120 empty boxes in this grid so that can’t be the case.
Lo mismo digo. Yo también.
Kind of a train wreck of a puzzle, but still plenty of fun. I don't play Scrabble, but ZA and BLANK BLANK are hilarious. And anybody with ALFRED'S last name is aces in my book.
Like @Hugh, I learned EIDETIC from Sheldon on Big Bang Theory.
Speaking of FIFTY POINTS, that's how many Ron earned for Hogwartz when playing wizard's chess in Harry Potter #1.
Rene RUSSO was also in Tin Cup with Kevin Costner and if you need a clinic in cringey acting, writing, and editing, that's the show for you.
PODIA are only useful if you're wearing a toga and got a B+ in Mrs. Beehive's 11th grade Latin survey. Normal people use PODIUMS. Those same Latin students help raise female antelopes on ORYXIAE farms.
Gunkometer--
People: 7
Places: 2
Products: 6
Partials: 1
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 72 (28%)
Funny Factor: 6 😅
🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 HOARY ALFRED BUTTS.
Uniclues:
1 Bird is left speechless floating in outer space.
2 Iota eta hair band.
3 Delilah.
4 How jailbirds bound to their lairs.
5 The second husband of your aunt in Corps-Nud.
1 ZERO G CAW FLAW
2 RETAG ITT FRAT
3 SAMSON TART
4 ESCAPEES' ORYXES
5 STEPWISE ONCLE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Social media. MADE-YA-LOOK WARE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I needed Bart and Lisa. Thank you!!
To each her own but I found Fatsis's book engrossing. I was taken by his sympathetic portraits of the oddball characters who play competitive Scrabble, how much study and work is required at that level and at he same time how small the rewards are.
It took a while, but I eked it out. Not a big scrabble fan. More into Strands.
Liveprof, we really need a like button!
*180 empty boxes
When I was a regular IRL Scrabble player (now just online) we used a 3-minute egg timer to curtail the very slow player. Often gave a little grace after the sand went down but never enough time to “go check [your] email” while the other player took his or her turn.
I think I give it a half star more just for the editors. Allowing the puzzle to finish with the last two squares actually blank in the digital version. I actually had a little bit of an out loud "oh!" moment when I filled in 66 across and it went to congratulations.
Better to call the blanks the most versatile tiles, not the most valuable. Their value is zero. It's possible to get to the end of a game and be forced to play your blank in a very low value play. But it's more likely you will, by virtue of its versatility, have any number of places to play, even if they don't produce a high point value word.
Two blank squares do not a Thursday puzzle make. IMHO.
Good job Anon 11:48 AM in reply to Anon 6:17AM asking about proper plural of “solo.” And the “William to Hell” (as I’m sure you are aware is known to orchestral musicians) is a great example.
Happy anniversary, Boss! Keep up the good work. Your daily comments, those of your cohorts and just as important, the opinions and thoughts of this neighborhood of creative folks are an important part of my day. Sometimes (especially in this fractured world) one of the very few enjoyable parts.
As for the puzzle, you said it better (and more appropriately phrased) than I could. In my opinion, this is another theme with promise, but the execution failed to provide me the Thursday challenge for which I yearn. I’ve enjoyed Mr. Stillman’s oeuvre much more than this one and hope someone might try again. As a regular Scrabble player, I’ve often thought that the game might provide a healthy germ for a crossword theme.
And I apologize to all here for whom the puzzle was difficult because of the choices made for theme entries and in a couple spots, potentially little help from crosses. I’m not a constructor, but as a six-plus decade solver, I’m certain this could have been a challenging yet fun Thursday.
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