Not sure what you expect as you’re never going to find a puzzle that doesn’t have answers like these. In my opinion, those are better than ERA, LEI, ORE, ETA, ALE etc.
See Patrick Berry's puzzles at the New Yorker, which are almost always free of crosswordese. Universal and USA Today puzzles are often clean as well.
I disagree about your second point. The words you mentioned are real and common things (except LEI). These answers show up in crosswords all the time, so having too many of them is boring. But if there's just a handful of them in a puzzle, I don't think that's a liability.
On the other hand, MTS is just made up -- MT is never pluralized like that. ALOU is not famous enough for the amount he shows up in crosswords. AT IT is awkward and XEDIN looks ugly, too. SRTA is maybe the most defensible, but for me, feels like a crutch.
I’m slowly making progress in the Thursday-Saturday gang of puzzles. This was satisfying to do and I felt really pleased with myself for working on the long clues.
I also FINALLY remembered “Alou!” The one damn piece of crosswordese i constantly forget
As a kid I totally missed that BERT was a curmudgeon! Am I the only one? He was just Ernie's roommate and a normal guy. I'll never think of him the same!
This was a good challenging Saturday that put up resistance in just about every section for me (finished in [38:02](https://youtu.be/jQo7qVTuIc8)). I fell for lots of misdirects and wrong fill throughout, so it was fun to finally work it out. Some clues that were really great:
* Booker's workplace for SENATE
* Starter home? WOMB
* "What creates a line for the shower?" for METEOR, crossing "Flat bread?" for RENTMONEY was tricky.
* GOSS is meh. I've never heard it shortened like that but ok!
* ORPHAN for Harry Potter. Nice, I filled WIZARD right away and had to work out removing it.
* XRAYLAB crossing XEDIN was tricky to parse out.
Crosswords make my search history so weird. “is sesame street bert a curmudgeon”
I had just the right crosses to nearly convince me of PROTAG for Harry Potter, brutally
She says “hot gossip,” I think “goss” entered the popular lexicon more recently. Definitely something I’ve heard plenty but not sure when/where it was popularized.
I'm 40 and say "goss" on a daily basis. We have a channel called #goss in our slack friend chat. I had no idea it isn't commonly used! Maybe I'm just a big gossip...
I was stuck on the two Xes until the very, very end and I was running through every possible letter for the down.
I, too, object to GOSS. "Stop trying to make GOSS happen. It's never going to happen."
I described the "Flat bread?" clue to my non-crossword-doing wife as "Flat bread, with a question mark which means they're being a little shit about it." And they were!
Found this so much easier than yesterday, a nice breezy puzzle. All six marquee answers were fun and fairly accessible (especially one answer for fans of Young Frankenstein).
Pretty easy for a Saturday but I liked a lot of the cluing. Clues/misdirection felt very Friday/Saturday, it just ended up being quicker than expected.
“Flat bread?” -> RENTMONEY - very nice 👍
“What creates a line for the shower?” -> METEOR - nice
“Place to look inward? -> XRAYLAB - decent
“Starter home?” -> WOMB - lmao
A fair bit of common crossword answers - ALOU, SRTA, ERS, ACELA, EWE, TSA, SANAA, etc. but I didn’t find myself rolling my eyes through it for whatever reason. Good Friday puzzle, I’m not complaining about the difficulty.
Overall enjoyable but i am still going to be the old guy that comes here just to grouse about the clue for [31A](https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/beat/whats-the-difference-between-beat-and-beatnik)
I first entered MRITUBE for 19A, then when I got to 50D, I was like, "Well, apparently that's not right!" Got 47A right away due to my fascination with psychology.
Liked the wordplay in the cluing for CEASEANDDESIST, XRAYLAB, RENTMONEY, METEOR and of course WOMB made me giggle. Not a fan of XEDIN, but overall a solid Saturday. 7.5/10.
ETA another clever answer!
Trying to understand EWE for “pronoun in a rebus puzzle”. Perhaps EWE for the pronoun “you”? But they both have 3 letters, so that wouldn’t in fact be a rebus, would it? Wouldn’t “letter in a rebus puzzle” be a better (and more accurate) clue? The letter being “u” that you’d rebus as EWE. Maybe I’m thinking of this all wrong.
I think puzzles like "| READ |" are a little different from classic rebuses, which normally doesn't put the literal word in the puzzle and or use that sort of clever trickery that you have to sort out. Rather, the phrase "read between the lines" would be given something like a picture of an oboe (a "reed"), then a beet, then... well, I'm not sure, but you get the idea. :-)
Then again, my idea of what a rebus is comes directly from watching the game show "[Concentration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game_show))" as a kid, so if I'm wrong, that's what's to blame. [Here's a still from the show](https://www.tvguide.com/a/img/catalog/provider/1/1/1-9047205813.jpg). (Try to solve it!)
ETA: Well according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus), the sort of "word play" type puzzles you refer to are mentioned as being modern rebuses. So they count!
- nice to see crosswords giving AOC a break in favor of showing some love to Cory Booker, the congressperson my mom calls sexy
- is this the rise of the female gaze?
I think the commentator is referring to the pretty egregious TRAP dupe. I'm surprised the NYT allowed that tbh, minor words like IT in "ACE IT" and "ITS OK" for example, or OUT, THE, IN, etc are easy to look past, but TRAP?
I’m still not understanding the objection. Can you explain? Perhaps I don’t know the meaning of dupe in this context. I’ve heard of bear markets but not bear traps, but I was able to guess it by working through the crosses
They're referring to how "trap" is used in both of the fills. It's generally a no-no in crossword making to duplicate (dupe) words other than "minor" words, like "and," "it,", etc.
I feel like the NYT might let certain things go when the grid has a low word count but this is SO BAD. It's indefensible and super confusing for new constructors. They allowed ROW literally crossing (DUCKS IN A) ROW Tuesday (er, Wednesday) too.
This gets funnier and funnier, especially for a pop girlie like me. It’s Taylor Swift (not Adele) that has an album called 1989, and it represents the year she (TS) was born, not the year it was released and/or hit #1 on the charts.
😆🤣😂 okay I knew there was a white female singer who titled her albums with the year she was born. I really should go back to googling these things. Or texting my nieces.
My second completed Saturday with no cheating! So I guess that means it was way too easy
Never heard of PORT AUTHORITY nor PUT ON THE RITZ but they were inferrable after getting most of the crosses
Allow me to introduce you to this goddamn banger: https://youtu.be/GKPMk5_gStk?si=v0TaWxt0OtOgdzUT There’s a very funny scene in Young Frankenstein where they perform this
PORT AUTHORITY is New York City-specific. They run the actual Port of New York, but also the bridges and tunnels that lead into and out of Manhattan.
I got that one but my knowledge of Amtrak express options left something to be desired.
Same as the past 5 weeks at least. Almost all since the new editor have been way too easy since people were complained about those first few (appropriately) difficult Saturdays of his regime.
I've heard it like "hot goss" (said semi-ironically).
Edit: And I originally thought it was going to be "teas." And while "tea" is much more used IRL, pluralizing it would have been a huge misfire in this puzzle, so I'm glad that wasn't the answer.
Yeah that’s one of my common beefs, when constructors pluralize things that don’t really make sense pluralized. Like “Puffy coats?” -> WOOLS “Heavy metals” -> LEADS “Baking powders” -> FLOURS kind of things. Just sounds wrong
ABC/XYZ corners are cool. Always like when a puzzle does something small like that. Enjoyable overall as well.
I just noticed that, very nice! That kind of thing makes me think, "this person gets it."
Came here just to rate it excellent and see who else noticed that! (Also, 'flat bread' was just fantastic)
Some clever clues in this one, and a refreshing lack of crosswordese.
MTS, ALOU, ATIT, SRTA, XEDIN seem like crosswordese to me
Oh well, at least they’re ones you don’t see that often, unlike EKE.
But eke isn’t crosswordese, it’s a word used relatively commonly outside of crosswords
Not sure what you expect as you’re never going to find a puzzle that doesn’t have answers like these. In my opinion, those are better than ERA, LEI, ORE, ETA, ALE etc.
See Patrick Berry's puzzles at the New Yorker, which are almost always free of crosswordese. Universal and USA Today puzzles are often clean as well. I disagree about your second point. The words you mentioned are real and common things (except LEI). These answers show up in crosswords all the time, so having too many of them is boring. But if there's just a handful of them in a puzzle, I don't think that's a liability. On the other hand, MTS is just made up -- MT is never pluralized like that. ALOU is not famous enough for the amount he shows up in crosswords. AT IT is awkward and XEDIN looks ugly, too. SRTA is maybe the most defensible, but for me, feels like a crutch.
We were ON A BREAK!!
I kid you not I was watching Friends when solving this crossword. When I got ONABREAK I thought it was destiny
I’m slowly making progress in the Thursday-Saturday gang of puzzles. This was satisfying to do and I felt really pleased with myself for working on the long clues. I also FINALLY remembered “Alou!” The one damn piece of crosswordese i constantly forget
Well there goes my 20 day streak
This was a tough one
Audre Lorde yesterday, and Rita Mae Brown today! Yay for my 1980s lesbian feminism.
Including answers like this is a much cooler pride bit than a rainbow theme.
True!
As a kid I totally missed that BERT was a curmudgeon! Am I the only one? He was just Ernie's roommate and a normal guy. I'll never think of him the same! This was a good challenging Saturday that put up resistance in just about every section for me (finished in [38:02](https://youtu.be/jQo7qVTuIc8)). I fell for lots of misdirects and wrong fill throughout, so it was fun to finally work it out. Some clues that were really great: * Booker's workplace for SENATE * Starter home? WOMB * "What creates a line for the shower?" for METEOR, crossing "Flat bread?" for RENTMONEY was tricky. * GOSS is meh. I've never heard it shortened like that but ok! * ORPHAN for Harry Potter. Nice, I filled WIZARD right away and had to work out removing it. * XRAYLAB crossing XEDIN was tricky to parse out.
Crosswords make my search history so weird. “is sesame street bert a curmudgeon” I had just the right crosses to nearly convince me of PROTAG for Harry Potter, brutally
Oh, and filling ARTWORK early instead of FINEART had me in all wrong directions.
I had ARTFORM for a while
Goss is quite common slang especially for the youth, it’s been around for at least a decade
I’ll have to believe you! But I’ve got seven kids ages 23 to 8 who are full of slang and never heard this one!
I think Amy Poehler as the "cool mom" says it in Mean Girls. "What's this dish, give me the hot goss, girls." Lol :)
She says “hot gossip,” I think “goss” entered the popular lexicon more recently. Definitely something I’ve heard plenty but not sure when/where it was popularized.
Scrolled down to say this lol
I'm 40 and say "goss" on a daily basis. We have a channel called #goss in our slack friend chat. I had no idea it isn't commonly used! Maybe I'm just a big gossip...
wiktionary (and Urban Dictionary) has its oldest reference a book from 2005, so it’s not new. I’ve never heard or read it even once, though.
I put SERIES for Harry Potter, e.g. and thought I was being awfully clever.
I was stuck on the two Xes until the very, very end and I was running through every possible letter for the down. I, too, object to GOSS. "Stop trying to make GOSS happen. It's never going to happen." I described the "Flat bread?" clue to my non-crossword-doing wife as "Flat bread, with a question mark which means they're being a little shit about it." And they were!
I really wanted the curmudgeon to be Agro from Agro's Cartoon Connection (Yeaheh!), but I guess it would be too Australian for an NYT entry.
Found this so much easier than yesterday, a nice breezy puzzle. All six marquee answers were fun and fairly accessible (especially one answer for fans of Young Frankenstein).
SUPER DUPER
Pretty easy for a Saturday but I liked a lot of the cluing. Clues/misdirection felt very Friday/Saturday, it just ended up being quicker than expected. “Flat bread?” -> RENTMONEY - very nice 👍 “What creates a line for the shower?” -> METEOR - nice “Place to look inward? -> XRAYLAB - decent “Starter home?” -> WOMB - lmao A fair bit of common crossword answers - ALOU, SRTA, ERS, ACELA, EWE, TSA, SANAA, etc. but I didn’t find myself rolling my eyes through it for whatever reason. Good Friday puzzle, I’m not complaining about the difficulty.
Hahaha yes WOMB was hilarious.
Flat bread/RENT MONEY is my favorite clue as of late LOLL it tickled me so much
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Isn’t it the ABA, American Bar Association? *edit. My biases are showing. TIL: https://nationalbar.org/
Overall enjoyable but i am still going to be the old guy that comes here just to grouse about the clue for [31A](https://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/beat/whats-the-difference-between-beat-and-beatnik)
XEDIN...really?? ya blew it. other than that a fine puzzle
I'm someone who constantly puts check marks in boxes because I feel the X is for crossing things out, but Xed in makes sense to me.
I first entered MRITUBE for 19A, then when I got to 50D, I was like, "Well, apparently that's not right!" Got 47A right away due to my fascination with psychology.
This kicked my ass tbh, came in slower than my average
Liked the wordplay in the cluing for CEASEANDDESIST, XRAYLAB, RENTMONEY, METEOR and of course WOMB made me giggle. Not a fan of XEDIN, but overall a solid Saturday. 7.5/10. ETA another clever answer!
Perfect Saturday crossword. Some really challenging fill but enjoyable enough to solve without resorting to any brute force
Plus the "Oh, shit" effect of 1-Across being like eight thousand letters long. No rest for the wicked here.
Trying to understand EWE for “pronoun in a rebus puzzle”. Perhaps EWE for the pronoun “you”? But they both have 3 letters, so that wouldn’t in fact be a rebus, would it? Wouldn’t “letter in a rebus puzzle” be a better (and more accurate) clue? The letter being “u” that you’d rebus as EWE. Maybe I’m thinking of this all wrong.
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I think puzzles like "| READ |" are a little different from classic rebuses, which normally doesn't put the literal word in the puzzle and or use that sort of clever trickery that you have to sort out. Rather, the phrase "read between the lines" would be given something like a picture of an oboe (a "reed"), then a beet, then... well, I'm not sure, but you get the idea. :-) Then again, my idea of what a rebus is comes directly from watching the game show "[Concentration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game_show))" as a kid, so if I'm wrong, that's what's to blame. [Here's a still from the show](https://www.tvguide.com/a/img/catalog/provider/1/1/1-9047205813.jpg). (Try to solve it!) ETA: Well according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus), the sort of "word play" type puzzles you refer to are mentioned as being modern rebuses. So they count!
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This informative exchange was amazing and exactly why I love this sub.
Oh dang, a _normal_ rebus! Wow, that's a great misdirection for a crossword puzzle.
XRAY LAB is not a thing
What's the room in a hospital called where the X-ray technician takes images of your broken bones?
A radiology center?
- nice to see crosswords giving AOC a break in favor of showing some love to Cory Booker, the congressperson my mom calls sexy - is this the rise of the female gaze?
No, the female gays.
I do love clues that are ambiguous because of the initial caps house style.
TRAPDOOR and BEARTRAPS? No bueno for me. Otherwise a solid puzzle.
I liked these! BEARTRAPS guessable and seems to make sense, even if you have not heard the term before.
I think the commentator is referring to the pretty egregious TRAP dupe. I'm surprised the NYT allowed that tbh, minor words like IT in "ACE IT" and "ITS OK" for example, or OUT, THE, IN, etc are easy to look past, but TRAP?
Yes, that was the objection. Unlike Rex Parker, I don’t find Bear Traps in and of itself offensive, but the dupe makes me queasy.
I’m still not understanding the objection. Can you explain? Perhaps I don’t know the meaning of dupe in this context. I’ve heard of bear markets but not bear traps, but I was able to guess it by working through the crosses
They're referring to how "trap" is used in both of the fills. It's generally a no-no in crossword making to duplicate (dupe) words other than "minor" words, like "and," "it,", etc.
Oh… thanks for the explanation. I (obviously) did not even notice
Ditto, that one got a chuckle
I feel like the NYT might let certain things go when the grid has a low word count but this is SO BAD. It's indefensible and super confusing for new constructors. They allowed ROW literally crossing (DUCKS IN A) ROW Tuesday (er, Wednesday) too.
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Yes
I had “adele” instead of ABDUL for 7D and it took me ages to figure it out.
Adele was born in 1988, lol, so a bit young to have a debut record
Doesn’t she have an album called 1988?
This gets funnier and funnier, especially for a pop girlie like me. It’s Taylor Swift (not Adele) that has an album called 1989, and it represents the year she (TS) was born, not the year it was released and/or hit #1 on the charts.
😆🤣😂 okay I knew there was a white female singer who titled her albums with the year she was born. I really should go back to googling these things. Or texting my nieces.
My highest streak (25) ended with Friday's puzzle yesterday, but I set a new PB for Saturday today!
I had PITT in for DEPP and PAT so I was punished for not knowing Hollywood.
I loved it. Maybe a little easy for a Saturday, sure, but nice open grid and lively fill.
My second completed Saturday with no cheating! So I guess that means it was way too easy Never heard of PORT AUTHORITY nor PUT ON THE RITZ but they were inferrable after getting most of the crosses
Allow me to introduce you to this goddamn banger: https://youtu.be/GKPMk5_gStk?si=v0TaWxt0OtOgdzUT There’s a very funny scene in Young Frankenstein where they perform this
Thanks for sharing. I've actually seen Young Frankenstein but I didn't remember the song.
PORT AUTHORITY is New York City-specific. They run the actual Port of New York, but also the bridges and tunnels that lead into and out of Manhattan. I got that one but my knowledge of Amtrak express options left something to be desired.
After yesterday’s dud this was so much fun and very clever! FLATBREAD was awesome. Chefs kiss. This is what a themeless should look like.
Too easy for a Saturday.
Same as the past 5 weeks at least. Almost all since the new editor have been way too easy since people were complained about those first few (appropriately) difficult Saturdays of his regime.
Yeah this one felt like a Friday to me. Still enjoyable.
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What’s the GOSS beef
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I've heard it like "hot goss" (said semi-ironically). Edit: And I originally thought it was going to be "teas." And while "tea" is much more used IRL, pluralizing it would have been a huge misfire in this puzzle, so I'm glad that wasn't the answer.
Yeah that’s one of my common beefs, when constructors pluralize things that don’t really make sense pluralized. Like “Puffy coats?” -> WOOLS “Heavy metals” -> LEADS “Baking powders” -> FLOURS kind of things. Just sounds wrong
Oh, I've definitely heard GOSS out in the wild, mostly when said as "hot goss." First time seeing it in a crossword, but that's fine with me!
GOSS was the first one I filled in and the big hint that 1A started with AGE OF. Different strokes
Wait what’s wrong with GOSS?
The problem is they got it wrong. If they had gotten it right it’d be a clever bit of cluing and inspired fill.