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Server's warning at a restaurant / FRI 9-18-29 / Figuratively speaking / Not everyone agrees on this / Some features of backyard landscaping / Ball girls / Act like yourself, perhaps? / Clicked with a partner?
Friday, September 18, 2026
Constructor: Ryan Mathiason
Relative difficulty: Hard
THEME: None
Word of the Day: PISCES (25D: Leap day baby, e.g.) —
Pisces (♓︎; /ˈpaɪsiːz/;[2][3] Ancient Greek: Ἰχθύες Ikhthyes, Latin for "fishes") is the twelfth and final astrological sign in the zodiac. It is a mutable sign. It spans 330° to 360° of celestial longitude. Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this area between about February 19 and March 20.[4][a] In classical interpretations, the symbol of the fish is derived from the ichthyocentaurs, who aided Aphrodite when she was born from the sea.[5]
• • •
It's a Rafa Rexplacement day! Very exciting times. I hope you all are well and enjoying the almost-fall. Is there a better way to welcome the almost-fall than solving and blogging a crossword puzzle? Probably, yes, there is. But this is what I'm choosing to do so please join me on my journey. |
| A nice GAZEBO |
My first thought here is that this felt pretty hard. On a Friday, I'm used to getting a toehold very early. Usually within the first three clues. But here I was bouncing around for ages before I felt confident in any answer. I knew ARLO, and TAU, and DYSON came easy. But it was quite a while before anything meaningful coalesced up top. Eventually I got UNITED NATIONS [Country club?] from just the initial U (wow, look at me, I'm so smart), and things started to fall. The bottom half felt a little bit easier, but probably because I already had some letters to help me figure things out.
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| This is a JACK AND COKE. I know it looks like just coke, but you'll have to trust me |
The thing this puzzle seems to be doing is highlighting fun, multi-word 6-letter answers. And I think it does that quite well! IT'S HOT, QR CODE, SEE RED, DARN IT, I GOT IN, MAD LIB, ONE SEC, etc. all feel really solid. We already saw QR CODE this week, but I still enjoyed it. Something about it just makes it feel like very juicy crossword fill. DARE ME felt like a partial to me (though I can see it reasonably work as a standalone exclamation), and CAN TOO is veering too closely to [Playground retort] to my liking, but overall this is a really impressive showing.
The more I look back at this grid, the more I'm admiring it. The long stuff is great, too. That UNITED NATIONS clue is a banger, and [Element of a dating profile?] for TREE RING is lovely too. SNIFF TEST is probably my favorite entry in the whole puzzle. GOAL LINE STAND doesn't do much for me but I'm Not A Sports Person, and I'm very happy for the Sports People to feel represented. KFCS / FAA felt maybe a little initialism-heavy in a small area, but that really is as much as I can complain about the fill.
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| KFC bucket |
The grid overall was kinda heavy on black squares, but I don't think anyone really cares about that. I don't even know whether I care. But it is something I noticed, so here I am pointing it out. And ... yeah, I think those are my thoughts so I'll stop here and let you guys go carry on with your days. Until next time!
Bullets:
- 16A JUNE BUGS: Insects names for when they emerge — I have absolutely heard of JUNE BUGS before but I have no idea what they look like
- 44A DATA: Cookie contents — Clever clue! (It's a cookie as in the one in your browser.)
- 39D CRAZE: Fidget spinners or Angry Birds, once — It really was simpler times when Angry Birds was all the rage and we didn't have to worry about the AI bot apocalypse.
- 5D ODES: ___ of Solomon, literary collection written in the first or second century — At first I (incorrectly) put in SONS here, but then I also (correctly) put in SONS for 7-Down so I was sad because I wanted both to be right but knew it couldn't be.
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26 comments:
Medium-Challenging. Lots of proper names that I didn't know. Trouble spots in the NW and all across the South.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
For begin to boil at 15A, I had SEEthe before SEE RED.
My 18A water containers were jugS before they were jArs before they were DAMS.
iN a SEC before ONE SEC at 50A.
WOEs:
6D sci-fi writer TED Chiang.
I've heard of the Song of Solomon, but not the ODES (5D).
Pixar's dinosaur ARLO at 19A.
NBA star TRAE Young at 20A.
The Office character KAREN at 41D.
UFC person DANA White (44D).
Drew a complete blank for Aladdin's sidekick ABU (46D).
Top notch - the grid is daunting upon first glance - highly segmented corners with limited access to that central tri-stack but the whole thing comes together nicely. The longs shine - JACK AND COKE x UNITED NATIONS - GOAL LINE STAND and SPLIT DECISION is an all-time cross.
JUNEBUG
Rafa summarizes the overall fill nicely. The mids are all solid and there’s limited shorts to glom things up. SNIFF TEST, TAP DANCED, TREE RING are great. A few oddball names in there but the crosses were fair. I’ve read TED CHIANG so that fell quickly. GO BANANAS was the theme in Monday’s puzzle.
Dead, Drunk and Naked
Highly enjoyable Friday morning solve - outstanding follow up to last Friday’s star.
Now I Wanna SNIFF Some Glue
15:26 for me this morning, so I think that's medium. The main thing I know about Junebugs is that they are pretty big beetles.... so they were exciting to me as a kid. Didn't get much in the NW corner, but dropped GOALLINESTAND in with no crosses, so that helped me get a foothold in the middle. Totally loved BELLES crossing DEB with their parallel clues; climbed MADLIB and DARNIT to JACKANDCOKE and on up into the NE, came down the far side and so PISCES and IGOTIN helped me see UNITEDNATIONS and SPLITDECISION. then I had the final IOS and that helped me see SCENARIOS. Like @Conrad had no idea about TED, ARLO, or KAREN, though I did know TRAE and guessed DANA off the D. This was a ****.5 as far as I'm concerned, definitely Puzzle of the Week, very clean nice fill. Wish I could spend the morning sitting in that GAZEBO, Rafa, but I gotta go to work today. Maybe tomorrow..... : ) Thank you, Ryan, this was a truly inspired puzzle, really really nice!
Too much niche trivia.
Challenging, but other than a too many obscure names (to me) I thought this was a very good puzzle!
This is Ryan’s third Times puzzle, and his first two were Mondays, so there was no indication until today that he could clue like this, where the box became Wordplay Heaven.
Not inferior wordplay either, but clever genuine pleasure wordplay.
OMG, one right after another. I marked 18 clues with either wordplay humor or wordplay misdirects, when generally four is a bounty.
Wordplay such as [Act like yourself, perhaps?] for DO A CAMEO, [Element of a dating profile?], for TREE RING, [Clicked with a partner?] for TAP DANCED -- three sublime original clues.
Wordplay makes the brain work in a feel-good way, and often makes it belly-laugh. You’re not just cracking riddles, but you’re having a good time as well. To me, that’s crosswords at its best.
Throw in freshness like NYT debuts, SNIFF TEST, I GOT IN, and DO A CAMEO, and that's crosswords at its very best.
Now that you’ve shown what you can do, Ryan, please sir, come back soon – I loved this!
Challenging for me. The first answer I put in was GOAL LINE STAND; I had trouble getting a hold but eventually had everything except the SW, where I had "trend" for CRAZE. Once I realized trend was wrong I was able to see A LA CARTE and I finally got that corner. Nice, challenging puzzle and a great one for Friday--more of this, please.
Yes, what Lewis said. Bravo, Ryan!
MACS two days in a row, properly clued today!
I had MAYFLIES before the crossers led me to JUNEBUGS
mayflies before JUNE BUGS, anyone?
Overall, a good Friday with some tricky cluing. I wish the central stack had had some of that same trickiness to the clues, but can't have everything.
Never heard of a Plant Mom.
Oh, and I knew TRAE Young right away - he's a Wizard now - but managed to get two of the four letters wrong spelling it TRey.
I got to meet Rex last night at the first WFMU Crossword Meet-up!
wow. Wordplay heaven? I'd say wordplay hell. one of the least pleasant solves in recent memory, and not because it was hard. It's as if the creator came up with a misdirect clue, and then built a second misdirect on top of that. Some of the choices are flat out incomprehensible - the clue to SEGUED? or HORDE? c'mon. that's not word play, just a way of being insufferable. Deeply unfun.
Enjoyable puzzle. The trick was to solve the misdirection, then pick the right answer from that subset. For example, for element of a dating profile I wanted CARBON something. A little faster than an average Friday.
All the names threw me off, but stayed with it because the longer answers were fun. UNITEDNATIONS and SNIFFTEST came pretty easily. Liked the misdirection in the clues—dating profile had me thinking about online dating sites about which I’m totally ignorant, and cookie contents had me thinking about recipes, about which I’m also quite ignorant.
Hey All !
Toughie today, had to Goog for two answers to ferret along the solve, as I was completely stopped in both areas. In NW, ODES was my cheat. In SE, it was for KAREN. Shocker, I know, I don't know every character and who played them from The Office. Why am I even solving crosswords without that knowledge? The nerve.
SE also deciding twixt ONE SEC and iNaSEC further flabbergasted me there. In NW, had SEEthe for SEERED and wanted sNap for ENDS providing nice roadblocks. Hate being stuck without a foreseeable way out, so Goog happens.
Nice tough FriPuz. , SO I SAY. 😁
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Not only did we have QR CODE this week, but we also had SPLIT DECISION and GO BANANAS as theme answers on Monday, and here they are crossing! Did the editors decide this puzzle needed to be a Week In Review?
(I phrase that as a complaint, but I actually wouldn’t hate it if it were to be a Thing. I have noticed how often the Midi and the main puzzle have an unusual answer in common.)
Same!
I also wanted something having to do with CARBON dating for most of the puzzle.
Here's a cool video demonstrating how QR codes work, using a Go board to construct one from scratch.
Hmm, wonder if you can make a crossword that's also a QR code ... yep, at least one person did.
Agree.
1:07. No cheats. Thursday evening = 4 solves. Fun puzzle. Made me think: “I still got it.”
I was there as well!!! Maybe we met??? I was the one who won the first raffle! 😊
JACKANDCOKE: Jill left him because of his drug problem.
DARNIT! There's a hole in my sock!
Fish stick: PIKE
FOES: They come after fees and fies, and before fums.
******
Enjoyed the workout. Nice to see BANANAS crossing SPLIT DECISION, and GAZE above EYED UP
First, and I hope this is allowed here, I spent a great evening in Jersey City last night at Words Are For Crossing and was able to hang out with @Rex! Whoever said "never meet your idols" had no idea what they were talking about! Wonderful night doing some puzzles and talking all things crossword. I won a WFMU T-shirt, snapped some photos with @Rex and he signed my completed puzzle that he constructed for the event! I know my crossword geek is really showing here, but I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time!! Thank you @Rex!! Meeting you was on my bucket list!!
Now the puzzle. Similar to @Rafa, I found it fairly difficult but found much joy in the solve. I think all I had was PGA on my first pass. After darting around the grid to try to get any foot hold at all, I came back to PGA and suddenly PISCES clicked and that seemed to get my brain working a bit. It was by no means a whoosh-fest, but things opened up from there.
Like @Lewis mentioned, the word play today is just off the charts, wonderful stuff. There were so many "wow, nice!" moments today (many that I BARKed out loud) that led to a very satisfying solve.
The first in the long stack to fall was SPLITDECISION followed by GOALLINESTAND, probably my favorite. The cluing/wordplay for UNITEDNATIONS was also a high light.
Loved the in-the-language feel of SOTOSAY, SNIFFTEST, IGOTIN, and ITSHOT. On top of that, MADLIBS brought back some great memories of long car rides or bus rides that kept my brothers and I from killing each other.
I'm also having fun post-solve looking at the NE. When I see QRCODE, my brain is now reading ITS HOT as IT SHOT, whatever that might mean. Little moments like that, when a puzzle messes with me, is part of the beauty of the whole experience.
Thank you Ryan for a proper Friday that was a happy workout!
Juuuust below my average Friday time, so I guess that's the epitome of "medium". I truly enjoyed this one- lots of fun cluing and lots of flashy answers without getting bogged down in crossword-ese. The only thing I didn't like was DAREME and CANTOO- which are essentially synonyms- in the same corner. Still, great puzzle- 4 stars.
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