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Features of gathering clouds? / THU 10-1-26 / Sneaker brand whose logo features the "Formstrip" / Migratory fish with exceptionally sensitive hearing / Patriotic recitation since 1892 / Obsolescent credit card feature / Term of affection in the U.K.
Thursday, October 1, 2026
Constructor: Jill Singer
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: PAIUTE (9D: Great Basin tribe) —
This was excellent. Too easy, for sure, but the theme is very clever and perfectly executed. It's almost too neat, too on-the-nose. STUMBLING BLOCKS ... blocks meaning "stumble" ... that's it, that's the theme! But its elegant simplicity is the key to its charm. It's just so nice to see someone hit on a good theme concept and then absolutely stick the landing. All three of the "stumbling blocks" are neatly tucked away inside totally solid, believable, even colorful phrases, and because there are just three of them, the grid has room to breathe. Yes, it's a little heavy on the 3-4-5s, which makes for a lot of common answers, but those answers never get really ugly or tiresome, and there are lots of vibrant 6s and 7s to keep things interesting (CHISEL STABBED ENIGMA MUMBAI ZAPATA DRUM KIT etc.). The whole thing is just so ... clean. "Crafted," I think, is the word I'm looking for. Or maybe "polished." Feels like someone took the time to make sure that theme and fill were both as smooth as possible. Yes, I personally would've preferred a harder puzzle, but I still really appreciate how well-built this puzzle is.
- PLEDGE O[F ALL]EGIANCE (17A: Patriotic recitation since 1892) / BE[FALL] (7D: Happen to)
- PAY[S LIP] SERVICE (27A: Expresses support without meaning it) / [SLIP]-ONS (28D: Moccasins and loafers, e.g.)
- MAGNETIC S[TRIP]E (44A: Obsolescent credit card feature) / ACID [TRIP]S (32D: Hallucinatory experiences)
Paiute (/ˈpaɪjuːt/; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three languages do not form a single subgroup and they are no more closely related to each than they are to the Central Numic languages (Timbisha, Shoshoni, and Comanche) which are spoken between them.The term "Paiute" does not refer to a single, unique, unified group of Great Basin tribes, but is a historical label comprising:
- Northern Paiute people of northeastern California, northwestern Nevada, eastern Oregon, and southern Idaho
- Southern Paiute people of northern Arizona, southern Nevada, and southwestern Utah
- Mono people of east central California, divided into Owens Valley Paiute (Eastern Mono) and Western Mono (Monache) (wikipedia)
• • •
Moving through this one felt like a circuitous stroll through a park or garden. I could tell it was going to be on the easy side early on, so I decided to just ... meander, rather than rush to the finish. I went where the fill took me, which meant I got the top and the bottom before I had much of anything in between. Got the rebus trick pretty quickly...
 |
| [synonyms for "stumble"] |
No difficulty to speak of today. I had NIKE, of course, at 1A: Sneaker brand whose logo features the "Formstrip" (PUMA), even though I knew (or thought I knew) that their logo was the Swoosh. I considered PUMA, but in my head, all I could see, logo-wise, was the leaping PUMA. I forgot about the stripey thing on the shoes:
But the "N" from NIKE wasn't working with 1D: Doc seen for an annual checkup (PCP). I still can't quite get used to PCP as an abbrev. for "primary-care physician." You'll always be a drug to me, PCP. But once I got the "U" from URL (2D: Address letters), I gave into PUMA (and PCP), and then everything was much easier from there on out. The only green ink on my puzzle print-out is on the ACID part of ACID [TRIP]S—I wrote DRUG there at first. Easily fixed.
Bullets:
- 16A: Features of gathering clouds? (AEIOU) — those vowels appear, in order, in the phrase "gathering clouds" (with no repetitions); I like that this answer crosses the Old MacDonald answer (11D: Cry heard by Old MacDonald = OINK). You know, because "Old MacDonald had a farm / A-E-I-O-U..."
- 65A: The Black Knights of the N.C.A.A. (ARMY) — I never think about their mascot as they are not serious contenders in any of the major college sports. I saw "Black Knights" and my mind went to Vegas, why? Is that their ... hockey team? Ah, close—those are the Golden Knights. Ice hockey in Vegas still seems preposterous to me, but that's probably because when I was growing up, almost all the teams were in real cold-weather places. Los Angeles was the outlier. Here are the team locations for the 1980-81 season (when I'd've been in sixth grade):
 |
| [L.A. = only location here where it never snows] |
- 31D: Writer Gay (TALESE) — fun fact: TALESE and ROXANE have the same number of letters
- 41D: French composer who refused the Legion of Honour in 1920 (RAVEL) — been listening to him a lot. Posted this just two days ago:
- 64A: Migratory fish with exceptionally sensitive hearing (SHAD) — lol the idea that I know anything about fish hearing. Did they give them hearing tests? That must've been fun. Do SHAD like RAVEL? Play this for the SHAD in your life and see!
That's all for today. See you next time.
P.S. gah, I almost forgot my best mistake, the one that (briefly) made me So Mad at this puzzle. I had the GRA- solidly in place at 19D: Words that might come before a meal, and, well ... this happened:
The indignation. "GRAB A!?!?!!? That's your fill!? That's the worst partial I've ever seen. 'GRAB A meal!?' The clue's not even worded correctly: if you put GRAB A before 'a meal' you've got 'GRAB A a meal,' which is nonsense. How in the world..." etc. In my defense, the clue did say "words," plural. And it said they "might come" before a meal, not that they were "said" (which would've got me to GRACE easily). Sigh. OK, I'm off to GRAB A coffee now. Bye.
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56 comments:
I must be sleep-deprived because this was a challenge. I don’t remember ever seeing PAIUTE in a puzzle and getting the STUMBLING BLOCKS correctly inserted was hard.
Super Easy. I got the first rebus at 7D, BE[FALL], and didn't read the across clues for any of them. Liked it a lot less than @Rex did, mainly because it was too easy for a Thursday. And I don't like rebus puzzles generally.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
I don't know what a "Formstrip" is so my 1A sneaker brand was nike before it was aviA before it was PUMA.
I thought woodpecker food was a grub, but I had too much of SUET in place before I saw the clue (13D).
WOEs:
The PAIUTE tribe of the Great Basin and 9D.
Couldn't recall "Queen of Salsa" CELIA Cruz (39A).
Ate over? 5D
Enjoyed this one too.... 3 different rebus words, connected by meaning, in asymmetrical unpredictable spots..... nice! Couldn't figure out what the PL.... was going to be (I spelled PAyUTE with a Y and so it just wasn't looking right...) but I finally got it at SLIPONS and SLIPSERVICE.... CHISEL took me a long time to see today. I guess I was thinking of clay, pliable material sculpting, not rock. I still wind up swiping cards...especially my FSA card since it doesn't have a chip. So I guess I don't think of those MAGNETICSTRIPES as obsolete. SB to the rescue today for TUTTI! Thanks, Jill, this was great fun!!!! : )
I was surprised @Rex didn't mention that TRIP doesn't break across two words the way FALL and SLIP do, and that we saw a GAIA variant (GAEA) earlier this week. But I enjoyed the puzzle almost as much as OFL. I, too, thought it would be seasonal but then got SLIP and realized what was going on. I didn't get the revealer until I already had two of the themes and I found it medium rather than easy, but it was an enjoyable puzzle nonetheless.
I got Naticked on the CELIA and TALESE cross.
Both more obscure to me than the actual town of Natick. But you can blame growing up outside of Boston for that one.
My stumbling block was the SW corner. Never heard of Ravel or Lumet. I am not a music person so I did not know Tutti either.
Given all day I would have never pulled LUMET out of my ass. Same with RAVEL. And LUV. And whether 41 across was RNA or DNA was, as often is true even with a scientifically correct cluing, ultimately just the toss of a coin..
This was mostly very easy. but that knot of junk trivia described above really sucked all the fun out of the room, and I had to cheat to finish. Blech.
After TRIPping up on GAEA earlier this week, I entered that first for GAIA today, and that error stayed until the end since I didn’t know KIM Possible. Another STUMBLING BLOCK was not knowing RAVEL, which made the crossing with RNA a coin toss with DNA, and combining that with not knowing LUMET made LUV hard to see. But all told, this was a lovely Thursday. I enjoy a good rebus, and as Rex avers, this one was indeed good.
Fun - liked the trick but it could have used another themer. The spanning revealer is fantastic. PAYS LIP SERVICE is the standout.
Elizabeth COOK
Overall fill was fine - agree with the big guy that it trended more early week but no complaints here. Read TALESE’s book on the Verrazano last winter. Another LUMET sighting so soon? The OPUSES - ZAPATA stack is wonderful.
ENIGMA
Enjoyable Thursday morning solve. Now - on to Tampa.
The Saddest Story Ever Told
I loved the Great Brain book series when I was a kid, so PAIUTE was a gimme.
Magnetic sTRIPe
Acid TRIPs
This theme has never been done before (I’ve checked), and it’s so perfect – stumbles in blocks – so crossword iconic, you’d think someone would have come up with it before. But no, and high credit to Jill for seeing it first.
But then it had to be brought to fruition, and this was done masterfully.
It’s a tight theme – there aren’t many good synonyms for “stumble” that are short enough for rebuses.
Then you have to find phrases to embed them in, where these three words don’t have their “stumble” meaning. FALL, for instance, doesn’t mean “stumble” in PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE.
Jill not only found them, but they are colorful, and with letter counts that fit grid symmetry. It's uber-tough to make that happen.
And here’s the kicker. Those three non-revealer theme answers bring sweet freshness to the box. All of them are Times debut answers!
So, wow, Jill. This was a gem of a theme in concept and execution, and its beauty beautified my day. Thank you!
[You won't get dirty growing plants this way]
HY(DROP)ONICS
Agree. I was surprised Rex didn’t downgrade the rating for that. Maybe he’s getting soft in his 3rd decade
Really good puzzle. It does give the trick away too early, as PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE is such a gimme, but remained very entertaining. Well, you have to ignore ATEOVER, but the rest was entertaining.
Not usually a “how do you not know…?” person but three people so far have said they’ve never heard of RAVEL and Im sincerely stunned. One of the most famous composers of the 20c. “Bolero” alone for gods sake. SMH. And ok fine if you don’t know him but Calling him “junk trivia” makes you sound like an idiot.
Same! And got tripped up by MERC for a few minutes (live in the DC area and was thinking MARC like the train system). Once I figured that out, had to letter run to get the music. Did not love it as much as Rex for that reason.
Breaking across words is not important for rebuses. Circled-square stuff, sure, but the breaking issue has never been important for rebus squares. Those squares involve (by necessity) very short words that have to work in both directions. Whether they break across words is not that important.
Only an “L” can go in that square. Nothing else is plausible for CE-IA. Not a Natick.
Missed opportunity to post the classic soul blues tune "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love."
Very easy but TALESE/CELIA/MERC was a little Natick-y for me. I inferred the E and the L from C__IA, but I wasn’t familiar with any of the three answers. Just gotta learn more things, I guess.
Thanks for the "GRAB A" rant at the end; that gave me a good chuckle.
When I was in 6th grade the NHL was Bruins, Rangers, Red Wings, Black Hawks, Maple Leafs, and Canadiens. That's it. 6 teams. It stayed that way until I was in college, 1967. Now, 16 teams make the playoffs. ( 1/2 of the league-ridiculous)
Agree with this being a Natick. Feel like with a foreign name a bunch of letters are plausible for CE-IA. Why not N or R?
I agree, Anonymous. Personally, I save my idiotic rants for names of athletes, TV personalities, and TikTok influencers.
Things I know = Things everyone should know
Things I don’t know = Junk trivia
Not blaming you for not knowing Sidney LUMET, but want to put a plug for having a LUMET marathon sometime. The guy is one of the greatest American filmmakers. Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Network…… so many great films.
LOVED this puzzle! Clever clues….
I liked this one. I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve had a good rebus puzzle (or at least since I have… life has been chaos and I haven’t confidently made time for the NYTXW). Simple straightforward concept. Could tell which across answers would be themers but still had to work out where the rebus would be.
Like others I got killed on some of the names and trivia. The entire NE was a no-go for me between PAIUTE, SUET (which I only know as a hog call) and the vowels that I didn’t understand till I saw the explanation here.
Celia is a name. Ceria? Cenia?? My computer won’t even let me type those. Keeps “correcting” me to CELIA. (or Xenia haha)
RFK Jr. will be leaving us with an HHS Dept. that's broke, and ACDC that's even BROKER.
Miss Nomer notes: There are three Ts in TUTTI.
The decision of many young men when their student deferments ended: Nam? NAH.
The composer was arrested when his alibi began to unRAVEL.
MOE comes close to being a theme answer. He was a STUMBLING BLOCKhead.
You may be pleased to learn there was GAIA marriage among the gods. (Her hubby was Uranus.)
***********
I can almost never predict when OFL will pan or praise a puzzle. That's part of the fun of reading the writeups. With me it's just "I filled the boxes with letters. Duh."
The plural of opus is opera. Nobody says opuses.
Like sleepover, but with food. I remember using that phrase as a kid, but maybe it's a New York thing.
Thanks for the explanation of AEIOU, I was quite puzzled about that one
An enjoyable rebus puzzle. A momentary stumbling block was when I thought Paiute had a y next to the p instead of the a until I saw eiou.🎈🎈🎊🎊
I’ve also never heard of Bolero!
I think we just had a discussion concerning what a PCP is, maybe with one of our Canadian friends. I see enough different doctors now that some nice receptionist is always asking me who my PCP is, so I've gotten used to it. The P led to PUMA and I was off.
Filled in the PLEDGEOFALLEGIANCE answer and just thought the ALL was missing, for some reason I skipped the BEFALL clue so I had to go back and fix that when I was done. STUMBLINGBLOCKS was obvious from the clue but did I connect BLOCKS with crossword squares? I did not. Duh.
Very nice fill except for ATEOVER. Who says that? The MERC/MACE cross took some crosses, as I think of a MACE as a p pretty extreme method of self defense. Liked the AEIOU clue and it still takes some thought to think of a "tagging symbol" as an @ an make it into ATS.
Very nice Thursday indeed, JS. A Jump Start in the NW and a nice ride after that. Thanks for all the fun.
“Ate over” has never been an expression. Ever. and the AEIOU thing is cheap and terrible. Oh yeah and it’s a “magnetic strip” . Never heard it called a stripe. I hated this puzzle
Ok but dull 🤷♀️
Wrong. Nobody calls plural of opus “opera” because (*in English*) that word is obviously taken.
I wanted strip too but you’re overreacting to the other stuff. AEIOU has been in puzzles forever. It’s ho hum, not hate-worthy.
Nice puzzle!
If you look into Puma's formstrip, you'll find it didn't originate as a branding device; it was a way to add stability to shoes made with lightweight materials.
Another thing you've seen millions of times but probably didn't know had a name: the 'wave' in the Coca-Cola logo is officially called the 'dynamic ribbon device'!
I think the clue said "obsolescent."
I love tripe, especially when it's cooked on one of those new-fangled induction stove tops. I call it MAGNETICSTRIPE.
I'm a bit surprised that Testosterone Pete has allowed the ARMY to retain the "black" in Black Knights. And then there's the Ka$h guy who made every employee of the FBI swear fealty to him. It was called the PLEDGE OF ALL Agents.
Is a STABBED one of those beds full of nails that fakirs lie on?
On our recent trip to China we ATEOVER the Pacific.
I agree that this was rock solid and awfully easy. In the end, that's pretty good. Thanks, Jill Singer.
I wondered about that, but it would be really hard to break TRIP across two words, unless you are quoting from a book about beeT RIPening.
Are you coming home for dinner? Nope, I ate over at Jim’s house. You can substitute “slept over” as a similar phrase
Agree, a nice fun puzzle, would have been great Wednesday solve
Easy and fun rebus, like Rex said. I really hated having to fill in the atrocious non-word OPUSES, especially in a puzzle that was so familiar with the Latin language, but there was no avoiding it. And I couldn't make up my mind whether having SAINT and SAN (with the same meaning) so close together was bad. I had a fun malapop with DRUM seT before KIT coming back with TEA.
Gay TALESE was a NYT writer some 60 years ago, so he always seems legitimate in a NYT puzzle. Sorry if you young 'uns don't remember him.
My first impression of the puzzle was low at first, but that was only because of wasting too much time trying to track down a stupid mistake. But after looking at the finished product, and reading @Rex, I'm on board with the puzzle's quality.
RAVEL (41D) got me thinking about all the great and revolutionary composers in the early 20th century -- Mahler, Strauss, Debussey, Stravinsky -- and what it must have been like to experience all that music for the first time. And hanging over all that were the gathering clouds of war and fascism. Hard to imagine living through all that (looks around nervously).
There’s a mini-theme of ancient Rome with 48A EST (the e of i.e.), 50D ETTU, and 54D TOGA (thankfully not clued via frats). Add Greece with 62A GAIA.
Sydney Lumet was an A List director for decades. He’s responsible gor many famous films. And Ravel? I mean, he’s one of a hangul of 20th Century composers that are regarded as canonical.
Did Rex actually think the Old Macdonald vowel set was A-E-I-O-U? or was that tongue-in-cheek. Of course, the vowels sung in that children's song are E-I-E-I-O
This was a lot of fun and very impressive. While somewhat on the easy side for a Thursday, there was enough that I simply didn't know that added some satisfying crunch and the theme was so top-notch, and executed so well that it didn't matter.
Caught on pretty quickly as PLEDGEOFALLEGIANCE was a snap and it was obvious it didn't fit, it was a ton of fun figuring out where the Rebus was on a spanner as nice as this.
There have been so many clues/answers involving LSD, acid, etc... that I felt well practiced in parsing ACIDTRIP. That crossing with MAGNETICSTRIP was a thing of beauty, and then I realized like @REX and others, "OK not an Autumn related puzzle."
Getting the stunning spanner/revealer STUMBLINGBLOCKS tied it all up beautifully and I knew what I was looking for. I also very much appreciated that I only needed to find three boxes, sometimes any more than that is overkill.
PAYLIPSERVICE was the last to fall. I kept wanting it to be *giveLIPSERVICE and couldn't let that go. The three downs that should have given me PAY were not front of brain for me (though SYRIAN should have been) For that down Rebus, I wanted SLIPpers for Moccasins and loafers, that didn't help. It was SAINT that finally fell and gave me the "N" my brain needed for SLIPONS and everything fell into place from there.
From what I've read above, I guess I should be embarrassed that I'm not familiar with RAVEL, but here I am. That and TUTTI held me up a bit in that neighborhood and PAIUTE gummed up the works in the NE for a while. Thank you @REX for the AEIOU explanation!! It fell with the crosses but I was clueless. Well, I guess technically *not* clueless as the clue was quite wonderful.
My POV on ATEOVER: Much used phrase in my life, mostly while growing up in NYC. As someone else posed, maybe it's a regional thing(?)
Jill, this was a thing of beauty, thank you, thank you!
The phrase is pay lip service.
When there were only six teams or after the expansion to twelve, two-thirds of the league made the playoffs, so I guess that the format has been trending in a direction that you like. If the league goes ahead with its latest expansion proposal, though, I imagine that it will add an NBA-style play-in tournament for the teams on the bubble. At any rate, the first round of the NHL playoffs is the best two weeks of the sporting year.
Also, for the 1938-39 season, six of the seven squads made the playoffs. (I had to look that one up.)
I think GAIA/GAEA is worse than KEA/LOA.
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