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Maine city near the mouth of the Kennebec River / WED 9-2-26 / Multiple-choice selection on a midterm, say: Abbr. / Meh … or medium-temp
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Constructor: Mac Motz
Relative difficulty: Easy (9:53)
THEME: M AND MS — Each clue starts with an M and has a second M-word in it
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: EFT (Movement of money digitally from bank to bank, in brief) —
- [Multicolored implements in many art drawers] for MAGIC MARKERS
- [Marauder's Map encryption phrase in "Harry Potter"] for MISCHIEF MANAGED
- [M.L.B. M.V.P. nicknamed the "Commerce Comet"] for MICKEY MANTLE
- [Maniacs, maybe] for MAD MEN
Word of the Day: EFT (Movement of money digitally from bank to bank, in brief) —
Electronic funds transfer is the transfer of money from one bank account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, via computer-based systems.
• • •
 |
| just swamp things iykyk |
Y'all... I opened this puzzle and I sighed. Deeply. I am sure Mac Motz is a lovely person, and I hope he continues to make puzzles, and I get that his name matches this theme. I really get it!! I, in fact, did a similar thing when I first started making puzzles!! Samesies!!!!! This is not a blog post hating on Mac Motz, it is a blog post hating on the NYT editors, because they should have clocked that this is not a theme worthy of being published by an outlet with like a 3% acceptance rate.
First of all, we already did this. Not only have we already done this, but we already did this on a Malaika MWednesday and I already wrote a write-up about how much I hate this type of theme!!!!! Here it is.
I simply do not understand why you would challenge yourself to make the clues less fun, more monotonous (M&M lol), and clunkier. Why?? Why????? I do not want to be stumbling over confusing phrasing, I want to be delighted by wordplay! [Made eyes at in the manner of a satyr] ???????? wtf is this!!!! In a way, the constructor is the one who gets the puzzle... They get to play a game of Scattergories with entries that they themselves picked. We get to glance at the page for one second, say "Oh boy there are a lot of Ms" and then read clues like [Milliners manufacture them].
As I said in my previous Deja Vu Malaika MWednesday write-up, the solver is left with a themeless puzzle that has bad clues. And the stats on this one are rough. There are only five entries in the whole grid that are longer than six letters. (Yesterday's puzzle had fourteen, for comparison.) Three are the theme entries and the other two are.... RICOCHET and ILLINOIS. There are also twenty-five three-letter entries, which is pretty frowned upon. (There are only so many three-letter entries in the world, so we see the same ones over and over in puzzles and they can be hard to clue in an interesting way. In a puzzle where the theme is already "tortured clues," a ton of three-letter words is yet another obstacle.)
This is maybe the meanest I've ever been on this blog. I'm sorry :( Mac, I am ready to solve your next puzzle, whenever and wherever it is!!
Bullets:
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- [Making out openly or a mobile device, in brief] for PDA — I don't think I've seen the NYT do this before where they literally just give two different definitions for the entry
- [Multiple-choice selection on a midterm, say: Abbr.] for ANS — The puzzle wants you to think that ANS is an agreed upon abbreviation for the term "answer"
- [Mild-mannered characteristic?] for HYPHEN — This was a good clue!
- [Maximum measure of attractiveness, say] for A TEN — Parse this like "she's a ten out of ten"
P.S. I had a little themed puzzle on Puzzmo last week, if you'd like to solve!
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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51 comments:
Hi Malaika, you said it. I opened this and saw all the clues and cried "Noooooooooooooooooooooo!" Just a terrible terrible idea. The M-M theme is okay, but why oh why do this awful thing with the clues?
And in Across Lite it is even worse because there are a whackload of asterisks all over the place in the clues. Example, 17 across:
*M*uch of *M*ali
....and they're ALL like that! I wish I could add a screen shot to show you how horribly ugly that is. If they just left it:
Much of Mali
it wouldn't be so awful.
So sad because the theme is okay
I pretty much agree with everything Malaika said. Her assessment was all the more remarkable coming from such a positive person. As I was working the puzzle I kept thinking, “this is awful. I can’t believe this is in the New York Times!”
I don’t fault the constructor. His work is much more accomplished than anything I could create. It just doesn’t belong in the Times.
On a side note, I was relieved to see Malaika’s byline on the blog today. I’d dreaded another of Rex’s inevitable screeds against all things Harry Potter.
Oops... was typing my comment and everything vanished; I dunno if it posted or not. Anyway...
What Malaika said. I opened the puzzle and saw all the clues and said "Noooo!" Of course it turns out Across Lite decided to fill all the clues with a bunch of asterisks around the M's, so there is just a blizzard of asterisks on the screen. Eg, 17 across:
*M*uch of *M*ali
That is really horrible! It is way worse than just having the M's and not making a fuss about it. I wish I could post a screen shot of how awful that looks. The theme is actually okay if you don't make it worse by mucking with the format of the clues. Big thumbs down on that. Sorry, *M*ac *M*otz!
Malaika nailed it. This was gruesome.
A skosh tougher than medium for me, mostly because of the MISCHIEF/DURIAN/PATTY area. MISCHIEF… was a WOE, DURIAN took a while to vaguely remember and spell, and the PATTY clue was tricky. Other than that easy-medium.
Costly erasure - ILe before ICI.
I also did not know MATRON and WEN.
@Malaika makes many good points with which I mostly agree.
I’m sorry you had to slog thru this thing, Malaika, after the northwest corner I had no motivation to extend the punishment. I wonder how many other solvers got off the M train at the first stop.
It was quite a feat for Mac to construct this, so congrats on that.
I weigh 230 pounds, but I know I don't carry as much weight as Malaika does with the NYTXW crowd. I liked the puzzle. I'd say, "Mostly Marvelous."
It's less than perfect...a Harry Potter phrase crossing the grid was a turnoff. But most of the "M" entries work. MANDMS looks like a misprint, but it's a perfect lead-in to the others.
Ugh. No fun.
Would have loved to read Rex’s teardown of this puzzle, but Malaika nails it here.
A vainglorious outing for the constructor.
The self-imposed constraints lead to meandering and unspecific clues.
H*rry P*tter marquee themer straight down the center? I almost lost my lunch.
Absolute pass!!
Totally agree with you, Malaika. Your scathing writeup (appropriate) could have been from Rex except for the self references and the nice words to the constructor.
Rex also would have lambasted yet another Harry Potter reference, and this one the worst imaginable. I read all those books and have no idea what Mischief Managed is.
This was a Muddled Mess, a Monotonous Morass, and a Major Misfire. .
Easy. More a constructing feat than a solving one. @Malaika summed it up nicely, "a themeless puzzle that has bad clues".
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
My 21D mullable matter was a poSer before it was an ISSUE.
For the Marseille map word I had Ile before ICI (27D).
WOEs:
The City of BATH, Maine (10A). If a place in Maine isn't Orono, I'm lost. Does a place with a population under 9,000 even qualify as a city?
MISCHIEF MANAGED at 38A, and all things Harry Potter.
Agreed, the forced clues take a reasonable puzzle and make the solve annoying.
Well, Malaika, this puzzle is Made for people like Me, that's all.... I enjoyed it, liked the twisted logic of some of the puzzle's clues. Had no clue about MISCHIEFMANAGED (I haven't read the HP books) and had no clue what a minced-meat cake was. That was really funny--wrong thinking on my part. I was like "stupid editors, it's mincemeat, not minced-meat," not realizing that was on purpose, minced-meat being the "m" way of saying ground. So it was just a plain old ordinary burger patty! That mid-west area took me like 5 minutes. This was into medium or even medium challenging territory for me (for a Wednesday)--15:53. I thought you'd like it, Malaika, with your MWednesdays and all! Oh well, I loved this, even though it has too many 3 letter entries. I didn't notice them with those 5 nice themers including a grid-spanner! Hadn't even really noticed the name connection until Malaika brought it up.... congrats, Mac, on your debut and thank you!!! 3.5 stars from me. : )
The deciding question is “was it worth it?” - in this case it’s a big no. Malaika summarizes nicely - the clueing and overall fill fails due to the M constraints. To add further insult - we get an oddly obscure kiddie lit central spanner.
MICKEY MANTLE don’t care about you
There had to have been something better than this to run today.
Casimir Pulaski Day
Agree so much. The alliteration starts out boring and then becomes annoying. I nearly stopped and then continued because I like completing puzzles to the point of self-flagellation.
You're right, it is completely the fault of the editors for not saving a creator from his excesses. We all sometimes lose sight of the good and the beautiful, and a good editor knows when to wrestle the pen from our hands.
I completely agree with Malaika. The puzzle ended up being super easy BUT the cluing was so tortured to try to get each clue to have the two "m" conceit that it was just a slog. OTOH I loved the Harry Potter books and got MISCHIEF MANAGED pretty easily. We're staying right near BATH this weekend, which will be lovely. But what a disappointing Wednesday from the NYTXW.
Gawd awful. I was hoping to see Rex's pan, accompanied by a star-less rating.
Hated the clueing, loved the write-up. Malika rules!
That’s annoying. In the Times Games app they’re bolded which is annoying enough.
As a proud dad of a Michigan alum bankrupted by out-of-state tuition, I demand to see this puzzle's permission from UMich to use the letter M as it did. It's well-known the university owns the letter M.
Would it have been so hard to squeeze SCHEMBECHLER into one of the corners? Or at least BRADY, or HARBAUGH. Compounding the crime, Big Ten opponents ILLINOIS and OREGON are featured. Hrrrrrrumph.
totally agreed especially about the HP clue :(((
I found the cluing to be charming, actually, because, given its two-M mandate, this was not the smooth clue set we normally get, and I do like out-of-the-ordinary. I liked having to think a little differently.
Impressive that Mac was able to come up with eight two-word clues.
Then, after reading his notes, revealing his life-long passion for not only solving puzzles, but making them – all types of puzzles – it strongly reminded me of Will Shortz, who was the same way (and still is), and I had a fleeting thought that this might be the first Times puzzle by a future Times puzzle editor. You never know.
Congratulations on your debut, Mac. There is much cleverness in this creation of yours, and I am eager to see more from you. This perked up my day, and thank you!
Yes, Malaika. Thanks.
No thanks, Mac Motz.
I'm pretty much with Malaika. This gimmick works only if the clues are really clever in themselves. Manipulate a monoplane is pretty good, although it's cluing the ridiculous word AVIATE. But 'Measure of a membership?" I got that one from crosses, but it's really a stretch. And the central theme answer--I haven't read those books, but I don't think MISCHIEF MANAGED is as well-known as Ewoks, say, or Fangorn Forest. If you need a 15-letter double M entry, i guess your choices are limited--but you could go for a 13, like MISCHIEF MAKER.
MICKEY MANTLE was obvious, but why was he called "The Commerce Comet?" Oh, wait -- he apparently went to high school in Commerce OK. That's all right, then.
Oregon is in the Big Ten now? What's next...Hawaii?
As a Michigan prof, I very much appreciated your comment!
And WHY are the m’s in the clues BOLD???? So we don’t miss the painfully obvious???
Second puzzle this week that I finished while vaguely wondering why I was bothering. It seems impossible, but this was much, much worse than Sunday's disaster. Why? Why were we subjected to this? As Malaika notes, this is 100% on the editors.
Well, I'm not going to pile on with more criticism. I had a harder time than most with this puzzle because of the forced cluing but that’s life. In retrospect it should have been easier for me—for example, I got hung up with PATTe instead of the simpler PATTY and so couldn’t see HYPHEN right away. Maybe if this had been published on a Tuesday it might not have seemed so out of place. It was fun figuring out MISCHIEFMANAGED, and MICKEYMANTEL was one of my favorite baseball players ever.
iykyk … and if you don’t? Then it’s mean 😢
I had clip before I had clop. Highly inappropriate. That potential should have been edited out.
It’s hard to disagree with anything that Malaika said. The whole puzzle just felt so “forced” and, actually, “tortured” may be a better description. Taking an ordinary word like BATH and turning it into gunk is just one example. Then the constructor plopped a Harry Potter grid-spanner right in the middle for good measure.
A few days ago I suggested that it may finally be time for Will S. to pass the torch. The fact that this puzzle was even published does nothing to alleviate that sentiment. We are getting to the point where it may actually be the case that Shortz is leaving the puzzle in worse shape that he found it (note: that is not the case from a commercial standpoint, the number of subscribers has exploded), but the quality of the puzzles has certainly taken a hit recently. In fact, while solving this one, I could imagine some high school seniors telling me that their class assignment was to construct a crossword puzzle. My response would have been something along the lines of “promising, but a long way to go before you all are ready for prime time”.
Hey All !
Didn't hate it. I know it was tough to construct, and also tough to come up with cromulent clues that contain two M's. Good job on both fronts.
I do have a nit, though (of course, even though I think it's relevant.) The only M's in the puz are (supposed to be) the Themers, 1A as the Revealer, and 1A's symmetric 70A. Except! 1D is MMS! What? Easily changed to PATRON/MPS (Military Police.) I mean, come on. Ooh, just saw AMP/TOM. Tak Tsk. Easily APP/TOP. SMH
Like I said, I liked it. Just clean up the extraneous non-Theme related M's for a more polished feel.
It's tough for me as a puz maker, who has sent in a myriad of puzs that have all been rejected, to be 100% objective critiquing (some of) the puzs that make it in. As with anything, the stuff you make yourself will be good to you, and you wonder how other things that seem similar -not inferior - make the cut. Not just puzs, but whatever.
Well, that ZZ puz from the other day (grumble grumble.)
OK, enough DRAMA outta me. 😁
Hope y'all have a great Wednesday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Agree with Malaika completely. As unpleasant a theme as I can recall in a while, and it’s a shame because the actual grid isn’t bad, despite all the short answers. I think I might have enjoyed it with less convoluted clues.
Also, a small thing but very noticeable: it’s so much cleaner in a letter theme if there aren’t stray theme letters in the grid. The Ms in the non-theme answers at 14A, MATRON, and 43A, TOM, stick out like a sore thumb, especially the first, crossed as it is by a literal M AND M with MMS. Just a mystifying failure in editing imo.
Right on, Malaika! “Tortured clues” says it all. What a slog. Also, right out of the gate the clue for MANDMS id off because MANDMS are always plural, so they ‘melt’ in your mouth, they don’t ‘melts’ in your mouth.
"Jeremy Michael Dufrene is a Cajun swamp tour boat operator. He has been with Lana Del Rey since at least early-to-mid 2024.[2] The two married on September 26, 2024."
https://lanadelrey.fandom.com/wiki/Jeremy_Dufrene
(idk;ihtliu -- I didn't know; I had to look it up)
Usually when a puzzle does something silly like this, I'm here in the comments to defend it against Rex's grumpy take. Puzzles should be fun and silly, even if the thing has been done before in some way!
Not today. Oof. Ugh. The BOLDING on the M's in the clues was the nail in the coffin. Just hurt my head to read. Then I ended up almost DNF'd by "Munificient Man" crossing "Miss badly, maybe" because ugh, and I hadn't yet figured out UPS...
Bad Will Shortz. No ping pong for you today.
Easter Egg - 29A "Eminem" (giving the E;s their due)
The Times only accepts 3% of the puzzles it receives? And it took this one? Malaika was right on. It's terrible. I'm disappointed that Lewis, whom I greatly admire, praised this thing.
Got about 3/4s of the way through and despite the finish line being in sight, it was just too "unfun" to finish. Yuck.
Since there was a Harry Potter clue and Rex isn't here to do it, let me just say that JK Rowling can suck eggs!
The comment above twitting Lewis was from me.
I agree with you.🎈🎈🎊🎊
I was trying very hard to get any joy out of this one but (and I am not dissing Mac either, as I know this was not easy to construct) Malaika nails this. When you have such constraints on the cluing, the fill has to suffer. And this kind of constraint makes it very difficult to come up with clever, mis-direct-type cluing.
For me, having a Harry Potter spanner is a death sentence for my solving experience. I agree with all of the points that @Rex has always pointed out about the author, but it's also my complete ignorance and lack of interest in the subject matter that makes me wince every time I see any reference whatsoever (that's a Hugh thing). I understand that it was the "marquee" themer, but not up my ally. And to take up that much real estate...I almost gave up the whole enterprise.
MAGICMARKERS and MICKEYMANTLE are nice enough fill and CUE was clued well, but the whole vibe was just not my cuppa.
I winced a little at 40A, as I thought the "maybe" in the clue was a bit of a cheater.
Mac, you obviously have the mind and the skills of a constructor, I'm psyched to see what else you come up with for us.
This. As if the theme isn’t bad enough, you make 1A be MANDM and then you also bold the Ms? What are we, children? Yeah we get it. First nob-Sunday puzzle I quit in ages.
You know, samesies. I opened this puzzle, saw what was going on, and also immediately sighed. Then sighed at the 1A clue. A hint to this puzzle's theme? Man, didn't need a hint, I think with all the bold Ms in the clues the theme was pretty darn clear you know?
Ugh. A deeply unpleasant solve, sorry.
I was going to say that it was surprising how disorienting it was to have superfluous characters in the clues. Then I thought I'd better look at the NYT's version of the puzzle - oh, they just had all of the M and M's in bold. My version had *m* sprinkled twice in every clue and that made it so much harder to read. I don't think the bold letters would have the same effect.
I don't remember anything about "MISCHIEF MANAGED" in Harry Potter so that needed most of the crosses.
Mac Motz, I see what you did there.
this was so forced it was painful!! please put this kind of theme in the trash!
vainglorious outing — spot on
This is the kind of emotion/honest reaction I WANT to these bad puzzles!!!! Thank you Malaika!!! Well done.
aMp/toM is the most offensive ATMO. I spent way too much time thinking my answers had to be wrong because the M wouldn't make any sense.
MMs/Matron at least looked like it could have been mirrored by… something.
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