QuillxWords

Time: 7:43 Tuesday Average: 12:47 Best Tuesday: 5:01 I've never heard of BUBBA Watson, but, I MEAN , he sure looks like a golfer. Also, ROYGBIV doesn't seem like the best "Rainbow mnemonic" because I don't see what's at all memorable about it, but maybe there's an aspect that I'm not aware of. As far as the theme goes, we have GROUP SHOTS , which indicates that each of the long theme answers has two words that can precede the word "Shots." These are CHEAP TRICK (Cheap shot, cheap trick), LONG JUMP , HEAD SLAP , and BODY DOUBLE . I'm actually impressed by this theme since every answer is at least a fairly common phrase and each "Shot" phrase is well-known and common as well. I'm disappointed that we still can't get Game of Thrones related UMBER clues. I would imagine there are many people who are familiar with the Great Jon than with the Crayola colors. I don't know why, but I can't stand the shorte...

Time: 4:55 Monday Average: 8:13 Best Monday: 4:10 Today's puzzle urges us to GET CRACKING the various types of eggs hidden throughout the puzzle. As you can see, the grey squares each have egg types that are cracked by a single black square. We have chicken, ostrich, goose, and, of course, dinosaur in to round out the theme. It works well, even if we might not get much out of cracking open those dinosaur eggs, unless we find ourselves in A Song of Ice and Fire Book 1 situation and those are actually dragons. I don't believe I've ever taken a moment to look at ANDORRA on a map, but I still remember its capital, Andorra La Vella, unlike most of the capitals that I memorized several years ago. CAN YOU just stop by on the drive from France to Spain?

Time: 40:53 Sunday Average: 47:09 Best Sunday: 21:55 Title: Words of Introduction Unless I’m missing something, this theme seems to be lacking approximately one element to make it really click for me. The title stands in lieu of a revealer, telling us that the capitalized words before the word “words” end up being acronyms for phrases or, in one case, a proper noun. As much as I enjoyed that nonsense sentence, I think giving examples will explain better. “KIND Words?:” KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND . As you can see,we’re starting off with a bit of a stretch, in that it’s the only proper noun (one of the largest cut diamonds in the world and part of the British Crown Jewels). Something about coming out with Persian words right off the bat, especially ones that can be written in English in various ways, FEELS a bit rough. “HAS Words?:” HEART AND SOUL . H-A-S, the first letters of each word. Get it?  “BIG Words?:” BELIEF IN GOD . I guess this is a phrase. “ROOT Words?:” RUN OUT O...

Time: 27:49 Saturday Average: 35:44 Best Saturday: 10:34 The car crossword solve on the way to play ultimate is among my favorite settings. It might not compare much to Grab rides in Saigon, but it's certainly up there. I didn't get the chance to OVERSLEEP this fine Saturday as I didn't have THE LUXURY OF TIME because I was obliged to try out for my old person's ultimate team, on the way to which I knocked out this puzzle. I like the symmetry of "English author" NEIL GAIMAN and "Briton" JOHN CLEESE , both of whom remain favorites from my youth, even if I feel like I SEE what the two of them are up to too easily; it still works. I'd never heard of ROLF before and it felt so wrong that I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how I got the crosses wrong. But apparently it's a "proprietary term for a massage technique aimed at the release and realignment of the body." It's almost like my favorite muppet. A...

Time: 30:07 Friday Average: 27:18 Best Friday: 10:21 It's hard to even consider ICE ICE BABY as hip hop and even more upsetting that it's considered the first hip hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100. I'm glad that I listened to the In Our Time podcast episode about the PICT people, otherwise I would have struggled even more with that SW. I couldn't see anything except Peach Tower instead of the obvious PEACE TOWER for a truly embarrassing amount of time. The killer for me was that NE corner where I couldn't recall that "Smacker" is slang for a dollar and should be BUCK . Likewise, I wasn't really familiar with the term EMBED to refer to a journalist placed in a warzone. Good to know! Meanwhile, it's nice to see high school favorite JOHN DONNE in a crossword puzzle, even if I've never heard the wonderfully named "Triple Fool" poem.

Time: 24:09 Thursday Average: 24:43 Best Thursday: 10:18 I keep laughing about The Flophouse Podcast episode about The Emoji Movie in which EMOTICONS are apparently treated as the elderly. Elliott Kalan correctly questions if this posits a world in which emoji age and die or maybe one might even be a LEPER . Why not? Within the theme, we have the COLON HYPHEN and PARENTHESIS to make up the HAPPY FACE , which we then find in the rebus squares in the middle to represents the EYES NOSE MOUTH . I got stuck for a while in the center, failing to realize that there were rebus squares, unsure if we were dealing with SNeerS or SNORTS , and never having heard of HORST , a "Raised block of the earth's crust, to a geologist." Since I'm not a geologist, there's no amount of specificity possible in that clue that will allow me to get that answer. Argentina being named after SILVER just came up on a Jeopardy episode that I was watching on Netflix, so I was all over th...

Time: 8:43 Wednesday Average: 16:41 Best Wednesday: 6:52 I don't think anyone has ever said MY SIDES while laughing, but they've probably never said the clue "I'm laughing so much it hurts!" either. Today's theme was films based on a SHAKESPEARE PLAY and I haven't actually seen any of them, although WESTSIDE STORY is in my Netflix queue because it's featured on the Unspooled Podcast. I definitely want to watch 1956 FORBIDDEN PLANET now after learning that it's based on The Tempest and stars Leslie Nielsen. I probably won't watch KISS ME KATE or SHE'S THE MAN . I struggled a bit with the SW corner because I've never heard of NY Times journalist Gay TALESE who apparently helped to define literary journalism in the 1960s. I also didn't know Reagan ERA Attorney General Edwin MEESE III and I'm probably happier not knowing Fox News commentator STU Varney. I'll confess that I did TIRE a bit after my first 9 mile ...

Time: 5:58 Tuesday Average: 12:50 Best Tuesday: 5:01 In addition to, of course, listening to PET SOUNDS after completing this puzzle, I also made sure to find Steve Martin's KING TUT , which I'd never heard before. Who knew that Steve Martin wrote such a funky, SEXY tune? As far as the theme goes, the aforementioned pet sounds are hiding in those gray squares with HO ME OW NER , T WO OF A KIND , TATTO O INK , and T HIS S IDE UP . The theme doesn't GRAB me like the last couple puzzles, but it's still perfectly adequate and there's not really any junk in the grid, so it's basically everything you need from a Tuesday. It's also always great to have a non-naan Indian bread like ROTI in the puzzle. My only question would be whether OVERHIT is really a thing that people say. However, I know nothing about golf, so I have no leg to stand on.

Time: 6:21 Monday Average: 8:14 Best Monday: 4:10 I'm fully supportive of a tennis-themed word play crossword. I'm actually a little surprised that none of these groaners have ever occurred to me, but I suppose that's not really how my brain works. Despite many years of playing tennis with my dad, somehow POP SINGLES never once came to me. CONTEMPT OF COURT is a strong central answer and the remaining GIMME A BREAK , WHAT A RACKET , and FALL IN LOVE are consistently real phrases that do indeed work in the sense of tennis situations. OH MY , it's back to back excellent NY Times puzzles! The other night I stopped by our local pinball bar and, as always happens, there were people who didn't know how pinball machines work. They tend to understand the INSERT COIN instruction, but it's wild how regularly they won't know to push the blinking start button. I've been getting free games out of that my entire life and now that drunk people have been a...

Time: 34:10 Sunday Average: 47:13 Best Sunday: 21:55 Sometimes I have to be impressed with crossword themes and this may well be the best NY Times Sunday I've come across in my limited experience. The theme is PICTURE IN PICTURE and, as you can see, the shaded squares of each answer are famous films and then if you read the answer without those shaded squares, that spells out another well-known picture. Maybe slipping E.T. into THE LITTLE METER MAID (The Little Mermaid) isn't the most difficult, but there's something deeply satisfying about Get Out in GETS CREAM OUT surrounding 90s horror classic Scream. OK, PETITER PAN ("Smaller piece of cookware?" with It and Peter Pan) could probably have been cut. I SAID NO . The goofy phrases and similarly wacky clues are fine, maybe could use a tad more humor, but overall this is an extremely well executed theme. As always on a Sunday, I'm sad to be going back to your run of the mill 5 minute Monday puzzles. ...

Time: 31:08 Saturday Average: 35:50 Best Saturday: 10:34 I have no BARBED for critiques for this puzzle. I won't IDEALIZE it, but there were quite a few legitimately tricky Saturday-type clues. some of which I was keyed into and others that gave me a bit more trouble. I took a quick glance at this puzzle last night while DOG TIRED and quickly determined that I could not ASPIRE to get through this puzzle in such a state. In terms of what I was wholly unfamiliar with, I'd have to go with the Kansas state motto of AD ASTRA Per Aspera, which means "to the stars through difficulty." It's basically "To infinity and beyond" with a touch of that midwestern work ethic. The cross with TIVOLI , home Villa d'Este, was brutal and I was briefly CRITICAL about whether I should know what either of those things are. But now that I've looked at photos of that particular World Heritage Site, I'm planning my next European vacation. I'm anno...

Time: 15:23 Friday Average: 27:17 Best Friday: 10:21 It's almost confusing coming across a clue like "Santa ____" on a Friday, such that I can't possibly trust it until I have three letters and only then will I finally go ahead and enter CLAUS . There's also something gloriously straightforward about ICE CREAM CONE sitting in the middle. I ran through quite a few lineages for the clue "King in 'Game of Thrones'" before deciding that it was probably ROBERT Baratheon. I mean, there are a lot of kings, depending on when you count from, especially since the clue refers to the TV show, not the first book, which is technically called A Game of Thrones. Still, it's hard to be SURE OF an answer when drawing from that entire mythos. I think I'm firmly in the camp of people that says that we need to stop talking about GRIT since it's largely a way for rich people to try to get us to SEE PAST privilege. Next. MWAHAHA seems to b...

Time: 12:16 Thursday Average: 24:43 Best Thursday: 10:18 OK, I'll confess that I really enjoy these little extra features that the NY Times Crossword app throws in now and then, especially since there is no way that I'm going to take the time to play connect the dots after finishing a crossword. The BUTTERFLY that you can see begins as a CATERPILLAR and then transforms in the CHRYSALIS and I believe that's all the theme material, which I suppose is fairly light for a Thursday. I started out very slow on this crossword, only writing in crosswordy garbage like OED , ICE IN ,   and SPA . Fortunately, I knew that SALAAM is "Peace in the Middle East," so that trickiness didn't get past me. Apparently, thanks to crosswords, I also know what ARGYLE is, which I'm sure many people who aren't me just know. Of course, I'm once again hungry after completing this puzzle, ready to SNARF down some CABBAGE , SEA EEL , ECLAIR , and GATEAU . It seems lik...

Time: 8:39 Wednesday Average: 8:39 Best Wednesday: 6:52 Shouldn't TGIF be forbidden as answer when it's not Friday? I'd just had my morning meal, fortunately, when I completed this FIX BREAKFAST themed puzzle. As you can see, the four theme answers indicate breakfast problems that must be fixed. Whereas STALE CEREAL , BURNT TOAST , and SPOILED MILK can generally be blamed on human error and are solved simply by replacing the item in question, I'm thrilled by this clue: "Menu item #3: A Red Delicious, assuming you find sawdust delicious" (yielding MEALY APPLE ). It's about time that somebody took down the Red Delicious, unarguably the worst apple that somehow continues to haunt grocery stores simply through some marketing genius calling it "delicious." Unreal. Now that I'm writing this up, I'm suddenly hungry again and would be just fine with LAMB or a TUNA FISH melt, why not? The doggie and I did another 6 mile trail run in ...

Time: 10:37 Tuesday Average: 12:53 Best Tuesday: 5:01 I suppose there are quite a few ways to spell out a "kay" sound or at least four of them as this puzzle demonstrates. I love the words COMMUNIQUE and SOBRIQUET to start out. ARE YOU OKAY is fine but a bit boring. But then there's MURRAY THE K , who apparently was a DJ who referred to himself as the "fifth Beatle." Whoever that clue is for, it's not me. But, apparently in addition to being an early advocate for The Beatles, Murray also was a fan of Dylan when he went electric, so I bet he'd be fun to hang out with. Outside of the theme, there were quite a few clues and answers that had me scratching my head. I wasn't familiar with "May-December marriages," which apparently feature large AGE GAPS between spouses. Even more oddly, the agreed upon number for that disparity is 11 years for some reason. I'm trying to read the wikipedia entry about RACEME and I'm completely ...

Time: 7:03 Monday Average: 8:15 Best Monday: 4:10 Nothing's more fun than an IRS -themed crossword for Tax Day! I'd actually forgotten that this day was so imminent until talking to several of my international students who were understandably baffled by how our tax system works. As you can see, the long answers have the IRS letters mixed up and circled with DOLLA R SI GNS , of course, being the most appropriate. I'm surprised that the "Genuine class" anagram for ALEC Guinness, which we know from the Simpsons, doesn't show up as a clue more often. Next time, maybe. AGASSI was always my favorite player back in the big Sampras rivalry days and I'm happy enough to see him crossing TENNIS RACKET . Sometimes those answers just work out, I imagine. 

Time: 35:44 Sunday Average: 47:21 Best Sunday: 21:55 Title: Left/Right Symmetry I'm writing today from my nerd corner as I listen to the SPIN-DRY sequence of my washing machine in the basement. As far as the theme goes for this Sunday crossword, I don't know, why bother? It's only noticeable because of the title and then the circles around some L's and R's that are placed symmetrically to each other. The theme helped me fill in a couple squares, but it basically plays like a themeless, which is always fine with me, Do people say TANK UP when they fill their car with gas? That's a new one for me. So, I just looked up the GIBSON drink because I'm only vaguely familiar with it. The clue was "Cousin of a martini" and, sure enough, the first Google hit refers to the drink as the "Martini's savory second cousin," so I suppose the NY Times Crossword nails it again with the familial relations between drinks! I struggled a bit...

Time: 27:00 Saturday Average: 35:34 Best Saturday: 10:34 I was well on my way to crushing this one with gimmes like KOREAN AIR and DELTA (I travel to Asia for a living, sometimes), NOTORIOUS RBG (just listened to an audiobook of some her writings), GREEN GOBLIN (potential danger because I could name probably at least 30 Spider-Man arch-enemies), and you'd better believe I know MC REN from N.W.A.! In the end, however, I couldn't quite MEASURE UP after getting stuck for ages in that southwest. There wasn't anything particularly GONZO there, but I wanted "God knowS" instead of BLESS and I kept thinking that the double "Film site" clues would have at least one that wasn't about camera type film. Also, is KALE really a "Long green?" Look, it's another "Informal" and "North American" tagged answer with BUSHWA , meaning nonsense, apparently. Again, I think that tag combo is just code for a word made up to save cros...

Time: 22:42 Friday Average: 27:24 Best Friday: 10:21 I don't know why it took me so long to get MORPH from "Transform," but I would propose that an obscure X-Men clue would have been better once again. There are lots of little beasties assembled in the northwest corner with ANT , MACAW , EELS , and WASPS along with the big one, ORCA . I really need to commit MIA SARA to memory, because she seems to come up an awful lot in crosswords and not knowing her really slowed me down in this one. I loved FIFED for "Led a parade, musically," mostly because all I could hear was Homer Simpson saying "Put this in your fife and smoke it!" AT THE MOMENT , I am deeply missing STREET FOOD in Asia, because I've been back in the States for about a month now. Get me back to the hawker stalls in Singapore! Actually, this entire puzzle is designed to make me hungry with CHIPOTLE and EXTRA CRISPY as well. I think I'll pass on the CURACAO , but if there...

Time: 25:48 Thursday Average: 24:51 Best Thursday: 10:18 There's a combination of tags on dictionary.com that I've come to be highly suspicious of and that is "informal" along with "North American." In this case, I came across these after completing the puzzle and checking to see how exactly "Mischievous trick" yields DIDO . Throw in some details like "19th century" and "unknown origin" and I'm fully off board. I WON'T buy it. There's quite a bit of trickiness in today's crossword,  in which the ONSETS of the theme gradually come into a focus. Essentially, we have an extra syllable thrown into common phrases (or in one case, a famous name) getting you a phonetically slightly off version of those phrases. Of course, the clues are there to provide maximum ( YAWN ) wackiness. "Ornately decorated money?:" BAROQUE BREAD . This is obviously baffling but eventually makes some degree of sense and c...

Time: 16:39 Wednesday Average: 16:49 Best Wednesday: 6:52 "Face/Off" RATED R is playing at... I can only think of MovieFone whenever I see a rating written out like that. I hope you can hear the automated voice playing in your head now too. I confidently wrote in "Complete Games" for "Baseball rarities nowadays," but the theme revealer turned out to be DOUBLE HEADERS , which I don't think many people miss, unlike my idea. As you can see, the first part of the theme clues WON ON POINTS , TOO DARN HOT , FOR A CHANGE , and ATE LIKE A PIG , when read phonetically, offer a series of doubles in 1, 2, 4, and 8. Wow, "Bo's'n's quarters," in addition to just excessive apostrophes, gets you the FOCSLE , which is the section of the upper deck of a ship located at the bow forward of the foremast, which means almost nothing to me. But that's a helpful crossword word, isn't it? I'm just barely getting this entry in und...

Time: 12:06 Tuesday Average: 12:54 Best Tuesday: 5:01 I bet this crossword was fairly difficult to put together as each across answer had to be a word or phrase both forward and backward in order to satisfying the DUAL -cluing. Actually, I wonder if that was originally intended to be a revealer but the editors decided to just tell us what was happening. I appreciated that after going through the first ten clues or so before bothering to read the info screen. The longer I stare at this puzzle, the more I think I can see one of the eponymous Space Invaders. Now when I hear the name of EDISON , the first thing that comes to mind is the Theranos SCAM as documented in the stellar book Bad Blood and now an HBO documentary too. Since I was ABLE to close out this puzzle cleanly, I think I've earned a LAGER . Too bad it's 2pm and I have a long drive ahead of me. It'll have to wait. 

Time: 6:02 Monday Average: 8:15 Best Monday: 4:10 I suppose there are a lot of deer-related words. The DEER X-ING theme includes stag/hart, deer/doe, and fawn/hind. It’s definitely a SEXY theme. Have I mentioned that I’ve always hated the shortening of GUAC for guacamole? There’s just something entirely bro-y about it and all I can hear is some dude yelling at me not to forget the guac for the kegger or something along those lines. I read the clue “Establishment that might have a rainbow flag in the window” and thought, “literally any establishment?” But GAY BAR was the answer they were going for, I guess. Has everyone listened to the “Africa” episode of Punch Up the Jam yet? PAN PIPE made me think of it again. 

Time: 27:01 Sunday Average: 47:29 Best Sunday: 21:55 I just noticed that the black squares also spell out the SOS theme, which I supposes BALLASTS what could otherwise be considered insubstantial. The six longest entries in the puzzle each have three words that start with SOS, respectively. Those are SAME OLD STORY , STRUTTED OUR STUFF , SNAKE OIL SALESMAN , SAIL ON SAILOR (figuring out the theme actually helped me get this unfamiliar Beach Boys song), SULTANS OF SWING , and START OUT SLOWLY . I can't think of any way that the theme could have been TAUTENED and all those answers are fun on their own merits, but it may as well be themeless, which is never really a problem for me. Wow, RSTLNE for "'Wheel of Fortune' sextet" seems like an annoying clue, but maybe it's automatic for fans of that show. It took me a very long time to understand PASS RUSH for "It might end up in a sack." That's American Football, right? I'm not fam...

Time: 21:38 Saturday Average: 36:00 Best Saturday: 10:34 I suppose it was inevitable that one day I would be a HOT MESS and just never make it to my blog, despite handling this Saturday without too much difficulty. Perhaps I should blame that bottle of champagne after a 5 mile trail run, but I'm not NUTS ABOUT that excuse. The key is not to use the excuse of a broken streak to let my future efforts flag. Back to it! I loved the connectedness bordering on a theme with northern long answers  NOT A BAD IDEA , BUT WILL IT WORK , and WIN SOME LOSE SOME . This contrasts starkly with the hilariously disconnected TREASURE MAP , SNUFFLEUPAGUS (which makes me think of Bartleby, whom we used to call Pupalupagus), and FRA FILLIPPO LIPPI. Now, that last one, if you haven't heard of the 15th century Italian painter, which I certainly hadn't, might look like just a collection of letters, mostly Ls, Is, Fs, and Ps. So, I think it's safe to say that the south gave me some t...

Time: 16:44 Friday Average: 27:27 Best Friday: 10:21 In my first pass through the acrosses, I managed to write in a total of two answers, both incorrect. If you wonder how themeless Fridays sometimes go, well, LIKE SO . But I'm no longer willing to concede that WE'RE LOST after a bad start. I decided to commit to HIPSTER CRED with no crosses for "Bona fides from fellow cool people" and was rewarded for my blind faith. So, what does it take to get a PIERCE ARROW ? I've never heard of this classic car, but it gorgeous, and almost certainly SO RARE . Wow, KNEECAPPING is about as dark an answer as I've ever seen in a NY Times Crossword. 5-letter "Comic book sound effect..." it was really too much to hope for snikt, wasn't it? KAPOW . Yawn. How is it that I never knew the word IRRUPT , meaning to enter forcibly or suddenly? Noted and added to active vocabulary. College sports teams are one of my many weaknesses, but once I had RAGIN ...

Time: 22:50 Thursday Average: 24:50 Best Thursday: 10:18 This Thursday gave me quite a bit of trouble and I'm sure that I would have given up on it in my early crossword days. Of course, there's the trickiness of having the rebus squares in unknown spots, mitigated somewhat by the two that were placed in the long across answers, which is predictable enough. As you can see, the theme would have you go BACK TO SQUARE ONE , as the first square of the clues are rebus and you would say that same word in the rebus square to finish the common phrase. The most devilishly clever was probably "Iconic introduction in cinema" for [ BOND ]  JAMES (Bond). The rest, [ YOU ] CAN'T TAKE IT WITH (you), [ DO ] AS I SAY NOT AS I (do), and [ NO ] MEANS (no) were all fine, but considerably less exciting and did not elicit an Aha Moment for me. I threw in Oslo for "European capital," because that's the standard 4-letter European capital in crosswords, but I was ...

Time: 7:44 Wednesday Average: 16:49 Best Wednesday: 6:52 On the other hand, some crosswords are just perfectly pitched to me and, as a result, are just breezier than they should be. Of course, there are some crossword standards like ICES IN , ERR , and TSETSE , along with shrug clues like "Ver-r-ry small," which this time ended up being EENSY . But for the more significant answers, I was all about inventors and explorers when I was a kid, so those SEARCH RESULTS came as easily as they would have when I was 10. The year of URANUS ' discovery, 1781, just came up on a Jeopardy episode I was watching, so it was nice to get that fact reinforced. Traveling badass Roald Amundsen is seldom far from my mind, so the NORTHWEST PASSAGE was basically automatic for me as was RABIES VACCINE with a couple letters. I actually didn't know Howard Carter as the discoverer of TUTANKHAMEN'S TOMB , but 1922 gave me enough of a hint. So yes, I enjoyed this theme, although I kno...

Time: 7:00 Tuesday Average: 12:54 Best Tuesday: 5:01 For a second I thought it was the IDES of March today since we had two Julius Caesar answers (along with CASCA ). But THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT ; it's the second of April. I didn't really know anything about theme center BOB FOSSE , who won 8 Tony Awards, including for Cabaret. The first words spell out "All That Jazz," which is a semi-autobiographical musical depicting "the life of a womanizing, drug-addicted choreographer-director in the midst of triumph and failure." I should check that out. ALL FLASH NO CASH is a phrase that I've never heard, but it reminded me of the excellent "You Oughta Know" episode of Punch Up the Jam, where I learned that Flea played bass on that song after describing the original version as having "no flash and no smash." I use that phrase a lot now. There's also some fantastic music represented here with Dre's "Ain't Nothin...

Time: 5:37 Monday Average: 8:16 Best Monday: 4:10 I suppose this would have to be considered an April Fool's type puzzle, as the clues "Tea set?," "G-string?," and "Beeline?" yield T's, G's, and B's EN MASSE as you can see on the puzzle above. I'm absolutely not writing those out, but boy does this puzzle become even easier when you realize what's happening. I would have preferred farty instead of GASSY for "Like many people after eating beans;" again it's April Fool's after all. I know I'm not the only one who misspelled Ruth Bader GINSBURG 's name and I'm embarrassed to say that it's just crossword-y ULEE that bailed me out from an extensive search in this puzzle. Also, we can clue DOGES as "Grown up puppers" or something along those lines; we don't need "Old Venetian rulers" anymore! Which search engine is better when searching for comic effect, BING or Ask J...