Wednesday January 16th 2019, NY Times Crossword

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Time: 9:46
Wednesday Average: 17:07
Best Wednesday: 7:09

OPAH! This is one silly Wednesday puzzle. I'd also never heard of the opah or moonfish, which is apparently a big old colorful fish. I just know that sound as a general Bulgarian exclamation, so I'll just keep using it like that. I'm not sure how much sense the cluing makes for these theme answers, but I'm moderately impressed that both words in each phrase are replaced by homonyms.


  • "____, do these jeans make me look fat?" BUTT WEIGHT. 
  • "_____! The flight attendant just swatted a bug!" AISLE BEE. 
  • ______, would you like to purchase some religious music?" BUY CHANTS.
  • "______ and those crazy sheep costumes!" EWE GUISE. This one is by far the best. 
  • "______! Petr, I'm begging you again to let me get this!" CZECH PLEAS.
So, the second, third, and fourth themers seem to work better, because the original phrases would make some amount of sense before the following sentence. The first works to a limited extent, but I'm not sure why you'd lead in with "But wait..." But why would you say "Check please!" to begin the fifth one? Anyway, I like the silliness of theme and I'm just being nitpicky. It's easily better than a C PLUS puzzle!

Does anyone else when seeing a clue like "Teensy" kind of curse and ask, well, is it going to be itsy, eeny, or ITTY? Likewise for "Me, too!" for "as am I," "so do I," and SO AM I (and probably a bunch of others). At least there weren't any kebabs (kababs, kebobs, etc.) in this puzzle.  

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