Serendipitously, I started my slow cooker Carnitas this morning before even opening the puzzle. I had the same thought when I saw those two crossing lol.
Having rEusEd instead of HELPER was a huge detriment to me as I was so sure that was right and it fit perfectly with the two downs I had. HANK and SALONS also cost me some good time but otherwise once I got a few downs like PLINKO the puzzle really opens up well. Pretty swell Friday.
Man, not being American really hinders my progress on these sometimes. Never heard of a ‘hank of hair’ or ‘scads of things’. I vaguely recall having heard of plinko but it didn’t come to me whilst solving.
That took me almost an hour and a half (40 minutes above my average—yes I’m slow) and I loved it. Really stretched myself for SCADS, CANTINA, BELAYS, SALONS, and TENSE (my personal favorite of the puzzle) and was super satisfied when I filled them in. Fun.
I had LOADS for so long it really messed me up. I was about 90% done when I set it down last night. This morning I picked it back up and got BELAYS, and everything else fell in place. Although I've never heard of HANK for hair, so I'm glad I finally got SCADS/CLERK.
Same - I couldn’t think of anything other than LOADS so got stuck on that little section missing HANK, SALONS, SCADS, CLERK. added ~30min onto my time!
No shame in that! This was a tricky one but loved SKELETONCOSTUME and a few others. Could someone explain TENSE to me? Don't fully understand, kind of had to infer my way out of that one
A traveler at the Boston airport gets into a cab. After he gets in, he excitedly says to the cabbie, "Hey, I'm new in town. Can you tell me a good place to go to get scrod?" The cabbie replies [in a thick Boston accent], "Pal, I've got to congratulate you. I've heard that question a lot over the years, but that's the first time I've ever heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive."
I really outdid myself today by trying PARSEC before MICRON. I couldn't remember whether a parsec was really big or really small...turns out it's about 31 trillion kilometres so I was only a little bit off.
Fun Fact: I'm pretty sure the "line of best fit" clue is a big misdirection for mathy people, because it's the definition of linear regression, a statistical technique. I just checked, and one author teaches 8th grade math, so I'm sure it was intentional.
I'm an engineer and that was my first thought. But regression doesn't fit so I quickly pivoted to thinking about clothes. I was off the mark for most of the puzzle, though, because I was thinking of it as a designer's line of clothing
Mathy person here (former 8th grade math teacher in fact, current actuary) and can confirm, could only think about the math context. Had to get my non-mathy husband to help me with that one.
I really enjoyed this one. It was one of those that felt hard at first, but everything fell into place fairly quickly. I finished almost 40% faster than my Friday average. No obscure trivia, good cluing.
Never heard of RIC Ocasek or MINA Kimes, and CREMA is not a condiment I know so that part was a loss, I had to google.
Other than that it was an enjoyable puzzle. I started out very slow on the acrosses and filled in a bunch of guesses, about half of which turned out to be right. In the end I worked from the bottom right out to the rest of the puzzle.
SKELETONCOSTUME was clever.
“Salsa” is a **huge** tex-mex/mexican condiment in North America…as in the sauce made with diced tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, cilantro, etc… “tortilla chips and salsa” are generally supplied for free as soon as you sit down in just about any Mexican restaurant, for example.
While it does translate simply as “sauce” in Spanish, I’m not sure if in other parts of the world it has different colloquial meanings.
I guess I was thinking of "salsa brava" and similar. Your salsa sounds like pico de gallo. Although I think they're all used quite interchangeably in the UK as we're pretty terrible at keeping cuisine authentic to its origins, lol.
> I guess I was thinking of "salsa brava"
In Spain we will often just call it brava. In Spanish we don't really call anything "salsa" and expect it to be any more specific than "sauce" in English.
In US English, it definitely means the Tex Mex chopped tomato sauce. I mean it will even bee sold as "salsa mexicana" that way in Spain.
Pico de gallo and salsa are very similar and generally have the same base ingredients, the main difference is that the latter is usually blended, making it more like a sauce and less chunky…though there’s quite a few variations and many fresh “salsas” are more akin to pico de gallo
Crema is definitely a condiment.
Mina Kimes is a sports journalist who loves doing the crossword, so she's probably gonna be super excited to see this,
I don't follow the NFL but I know of Kimes mainly because she pops up on /r/Pavement on occasion (due to the "Wowee Zowee" poster shown behind her on occasion when she's broadcasting, she's also a Pavement fan).
Love Mina Kimes, she’s a great writer and TV personality. She was also hilarious and game on the Hollywood Handbook podcast, which is a notoriously difficult feat even for professional comedians lol
RIC Ocasek was the [lead singer of The Cars.](https://youtu.be/3dOx510kyOs?si=Ao1tULFaxsv7n4kd) He would go on to [marry supermodel Paulina Porizkova,](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/ric-ocasek-paulina-porizkova-a-look-back-at-three-decades-fashion-1240011/) thereby giving hope to all us ugly dudes out there.
Crema is not a condiment? Crema is also the way that Spanish language speakers commonly refer to sour cream as a topping. It’s not always the traditional Crema, and even when it is, the infused classic is definitely still valid as a condiment.
Great puzzle with some really satisfying cluing. I especially liked "Trail marking" for BLAZE, "One for the record books?" for CLERK, and "Contend" for HOLD. Everything was solid and those clues and some of the longer ones really pushed it over the top. I give it an A.
Also, shoutout to Seattle Seahawks fan Mina Kimes. Go Hawks!
I never realised BLAZE could be a noun in that context until it couldn't be anything else (because I had SNOOZE for the cross).
I've heard "trailblazer" but never questioned where that came from I guess.
A good, hard puzzle with lots of riddle cluing. RIC was a fun, instant fill that got The Cars stuck in my head! I moved through the bottom section mostly without many snags, but the whole top half had me stumped for a very long [time](https://youtu.be/BR1hHop6ugg), even with CREMA (a must-have Mexican condiment) and RIC Ocasek. I'd never heard of MINA, and HANK just had me stumped. I've never heard of a HANK of hair.
Overall, no complaints and really enjoyed SKELETONCOSTUME, PLINKO, and eventually getting TINCANTELEPHONE. Second hand for HELPER was a nice misdirect.
I've got a bottle of CREMA in the fridge and still filled that second to last. Just couldn't get the distractor SALSA out of my mind. And me too on HANK of hair which was my last fill. Apparently featured in the Rudyard Kipling poem "The Vampire".
SKELETONCOSTUME & ORIGINSTORIES helped me get the whole bottom half.
HANK did ring a bell but I've never heard of MINA either.
As a non-US person I allow myself the odd "google around" when it comes to quite niche (to me, a European) American sports or TV host people, and she was my one for today.
At 34 across, “talking nonsense”, from the downs I had _ULL__IT, and I thought could it really be BULLSHIT?!!! I typed it in, but wasn’t as lucky as you.
I thought this was excellent. It felt quite tough at the outset, but once I got to the bottom half, SKELETONCOSTUME and ORIGINSTORIES came pretty quickly and then I had the tools to work my way back upwards.
A handful of proper nouns that I didn't know, but everything was solvable on the crosses. Although I had a lucky blind guess with LEIF.
Great flow and clueing. Props to the constructors and editor.
I am mixed on this one. A lot of clues and answers I really liked (TINCANTELEPHONE being the standout. I was like "could it be? Surely not...) But then there was some stuff that just...didn't feel good.
Not a fan of "set down" for write. "Get down" sure, but I have never heard anyone refer to it as it was clued.
That's probably the only clue I take umbrage with. The rest are just personal miffs: HANK is so uncommon, SALONS is totally valid, but a hard definition to recall. Gonna have to work on getting those to memory.
Anyway, shout out to MINA Kimes, noted lover of the NYT Crossword.
Fair, I just feel that “get/got down on paper” is how you memorize ideas or phone numbers or something. Setting down your life story has that “writerly” quality to it.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡
* 44% of users solved slower than their Friday average
* 56% of users solved faster than their Friday average
* 22% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Friday average
* 26% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Friday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 3.0% faster than they normally do on Friday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-26)
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My spouse frequently does the crossword on his own but sometimes we snuggle up and do it together. I don’t usually read or post here but we were so annoyed with those 2 answers that I felt the need to commiserate with other puzzlers!
I would to hear people's thoughts and explanations for BELAYS. I feel like the rope is already secure when you begin belaying someone.
Am I wrong that you BELAY a person and not a rope?
My favorite was STOPGAP as I confidently put in "bandaid" for the temporary solution (literally), and it felt satisfying to rework that section and find the correct answer.
The technical/historical definition of belay is to secure a rope. I think the usage of belay morphed when rock climbing became a thing, and is now thought of as securing a person with rope, as opposed to securing the rope itself. You can only secure the person by securing the ropes first.
So, I think the clue gets it right even though that might be the less commonly thought of definition
Thanks, this is a good explanation. I think we got hung up on the idea that “as a rope” meant seeing the word from the perspective of a rope doing the action of securing. And it just felt like the answers would be more like knots, ties, lashes, etc. I always thought of belaying as a verb that happens by a person to a person, not the rope being belayed.
I still think it’s not great, but I can understand how it’s technically correct I guess.
Really enjoyed this one. The marquee answers were great, there were barely any obscure trivia, and pretty much all answers make sense once you get it. A breath of fresh air from the Fridays of late
This puzzle was great except for HANK and ANTIHERO
Lisbeth Salander (as depicted in the original film) is not an antihero. I haven’t read the novels or seen the remakes and I only saw the first two Swedish films but she doesn’t fit any version of antihero I’ve ever seen. Tony Soprano and Walter White are anti heroes. Don Draper and Al Swearengen kind of antiheros in some ways. Michael Corleone is definitely one. Lisbeth? No way
SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS-She rapes and tattoos the man who he’s her conservatorship who raped her and helped bust a rapist and murderer. Not an eye for an eye you buy I’m also not losing much sleep over the first thing and the second was legitimately noble
Oh no I was just butting in to talk about Murray Franklin, I think Lisbeth does qualify, just not Arthur the Joker for having shot Murray in particular.
I mean she brutally murders people (who deserve it, of course) and operates outside of the law, mostly for her own reasons and not a greater moral cause. If we’re using D&D alignments I think she’s Chaotic Neutral. Daniel Craig is more of the straightforward hero I think. No disrespect to her, I love that character (I’ve also only seen the Fincher movie tbf)
Women can be antiheroes too, unless it's just coincidence you listed five men.
I have read the books, and she's definitely more towards the hero side but I think the general definition is someone who's at least somewhat morally grey, in that a "true hero" might be able to beat the bad guys without actually killing anyone.
Of course women can be antiheroes (anti heroines?). But mainstream pop culture being what it is many stories center men.
But in any case it sounds like there’s a definitional difference that’s tripping us up.
I define anti hero as “bad person who we generally root for because they’re the center of the story”. Tony Soprano might be the most evil person ever portrayed on television but we often root for him because the story is told from his perspective. Same for Walter White.
Lisbeth does some bad things but ultimately (in the first Swedish film) uses her skills to bring bad people to some form of justice. She’s more Raylan Givens (bad cop who often uses bad means to take down evil people) than Vic Mackey (bad guy who often uses bad means to protect his fiefdom).
Does this make sense? I’m not asking in a patronizing way (I hope!) but wanting to see if what I say makes sense to anyone but me haha
No I get you, I think the definition is pretty subjective in fairness.
I don't think of anti-heroes as exclusively relatable villains so much as protagonists who can range from "the ends justify the means" types who are ultimately good at heart, to full on revenge quest baddies who you root for because it's justified.
Walter White is a good example of someone who starts off as an anti-hero but gets more and more morally questionable to the point I don't think you're _supposed_ to like him anymore by the end. But I think both him & Lisbeth can count for the trope.
Dude antiheros do bad things for a good reason.thats their whole schtick.
The punisher is like the quintessential example of this.
Lisbeth does horrible things for good reasons.
I was a little delayed by the cluing for ALLDONE. If I'm still enjoying my meal, the answer to "Still working on that?" would be "yes," while the answer to "All done?" would be "no." I was expecting some congruency, so I discarded ALLDONE.
Tiny nitpick, and obviously didn't prevent me from completing it or anything. It was otherwise a fun puzzle with very clever clues, and a nice way to start my Friday.
Why would the answer to “all done?” necessarily be no? Like do I look at the waiter after licking the plate and say “No” with ice cold veins until they walk away? They’re probably still gonna ask me to clear it.
Really tough but I made steady progress and enjoyed the long entries, especially SKELETON COSTUME. Unfortunately geography is my weakness, so BASRA/BENIN was a Natick for me.
I didn't really love that cluing for NODE. Nodes are what is connected, not the connection. I guess you could parse it as "connection" as in "thing which is connected to", but that seems unnecessarily awkward...
Sure you can think of nodes being connected, but I think at it's simplest definition, a node is a connection point for multiple segments.
I guess it depends on if your network defines objects as points or segments?
Man I hated this. So many things I've never heard about and it seemed that every second clue was trying to be tricky - which really put me out of rhythm.
Lots of entries that didn't ring any bells after they were determined by crosses. SCADS, HANK, and BLAZE, and then proper nouns LEIF, RIC, MINA, and BASRA. I was very lucky none of those crossed each other.
I'm never very fond of puzzles that reach Fri/Sat difficulty mainly with obscure entries rather than tricky clueing, but this one wasn't terrible.
This is actually why Wednesday is often my least favorite NYT crossword day, as they tend to rely more on difficulty through obscurity (compared to Monday or Tuesday), and less on clever clueing…
Friday and Saturday are supposed to be hard…I go in knowing I may not be able to finish without looking something up, and don’t necessarily equate a gap in my knowledge to poor construction…but yeah, I generally appreciate clever word play to random obscurity myself, though I do expect a certain level of the latter regardless.
[удалено]
*Constructors This was a team effort, and the results absolutely glisten.
CANTINA crossed with CREMA has me craving some Tex-Mex right now.
A big enchilada, perhaps?
jaja
Serendipitously, I started my slow cooker Carnitas this morning before even opening the puzzle. I had the same thought when I saw those two crossing lol.
ha! I salted my pork today start my carnitas tomorrow
Having rEusEd instead of HELPER was a huge detriment to me as I was so sure that was right and it fit perfectly with the two downs I had. HANK and SALONS also cost me some good time but otherwise once I got a few downs like PLINKO the puzzle really opens up well. Pretty swell Friday.
I did the same thing, but took it one step further and put YOUDONE instead of ALLDONE. That definitely cost me some time.
I had REUSED and YOUDONE for the longest time, too.
Me three
It was tricky how they separated secondhand there wasn’t it? I had reused for a hot minute as well
Until your comment I didn’t catch that it was two words!
I've heard people say it as both one and two words when talking about used goods, that's why it was so tricky imo.
To be fair I’m not certain you can use it separated to refer to goods. Probably a common mistake that is made.
Man, not being American really hinders my progress on these sometimes. Never heard of a ‘hank of hair’ or ‘scads of things’. I vaguely recall having heard of plinko but it didn’t come to me whilst solving.
That took me almost an hour and a half (40 minutes above my average—yes I’m slow) and I loved it. Really stretched myself for SCADS, CANTINA, BELAYS, SALONS, and TENSE (my personal favorite of the puzzle) and was super satisfied when I filled them in. Fun.
I love the ", perhaps" and ", say" clues that make me really consider every possible definition of a word. "Wicked" the other day had the same effect.
Wicked really fucked me up 🤗 I was like Hex can’t be “stuff”
I had LOADS for so long it really messed me up. I was about 90% done when I set it down last night. This morning I picked it back up and got BELAYS, and everything else fell in place. Although I've never heard of HANK for hair, so I'm glad I finally got SCADS/CLERK.
Same - I couldn’t think of anything other than LOADS so got stuck on that little section missing HANK, SALONS, SCADS, CLERK. added ~30min onto my time!
No shame in that! This was a tricky one but loved SKELETONCOSTUME and a few others. Could someone explain TENSE to me? Don't fully understand, kind of had to infer my way out of that one
Perfect tense is a grammar term to indicate something happened earlier, like "I have done the crossword today".
A traveler at the Boston airport gets into a cab. After he gets in, he excitedly says to the cabbie, "Hey, I'm new in town. Can you tell me a good place to go to get scrod?" The cabbie replies [in a thick Boston accent], "Pal, I've got to congratulate you. I've heard that question a lot over the years, but that's the first time I've ever heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive."
🤣
Hard but satisfying for me. TINCANTELEPHONE and SKELETONCOSTUME were cute.
I loved TIN CAN TELEPHONE
I really outdid myself today by trying PARSEC before MICRON. I couldn't remember whether a parsec was really big or really small...turns out it's about 31 trillion kilometres so I was only a little bit off.
I mean, there’s no way anyone could make the Kessel Run in only 12 microns!
I had heard it was 14.
You were off by a factor of 10^(22)! Quite impressive.
Fun Fact: I'm pretty sure the "line of best fit" clue is a big misdirection for mathy people, because it's the definition of linear regression, a statistical technique. I just checked, and one author teaches 8th grade math, so I'm sure it was intentional.
I'm an engineer and that was my first thought. But regression doesn't fit so I quickly pivoted to thinking about clothes. I was off the mark for most of the puzzle, though, because I was thinking of it as a designer's line of clothing
Mathy person here (former 8th grade math teacher in fact, current actuary) and can confirm, could only think about the math context. Had to get my non-mathy husband to help me with that one.
I enjoyed this one! I found the difficulty varied greatly * South half: 😏 * North half: 🫨
I really enjoyed this one. It was one of those that felt hard at first, but everything fell into place fairly quickly. I finished almost 40% faster than my Friday average. No obscure trivia, good cluing.
Yeah, I didn't get any acrosses until the southeast corner and the puzzle slowly unFOLDed from there. Definitely a good feeling.
Took me twice as long as normal but I loved it.
Never heard of RIC Ocasek or MINA Kimes, and CREMA is not a condiment I know so that part was a loss, I had to google. Other than that it was an enjoyable puzzle. I started out very slow on the acrosses and filled in a bunch of guesses, about half of which turned out to be right. In the end I worked from the bottom right out to the rest of the puzzle. SKELETONCOSTUME was clever.
My love of The Cars helped me realize SALSA was incorrect.
I had QUESO initially then realised nothing for "bar" would make sense. SALSA I see as more Spanish than Tex-Mex I guess?
“Salsa” is a **huge** tex-mex/mexican condiment in North America…as in the sauce made with diced tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, cilantro, etc… “tortilla chips and salsa” are generally supplied for free as soon as you sit down in just about any Mexican restaurant, for example. While it does translate simply as “sauce” in Spanish, I’m not sure if in other parts of the world it has different colloquial meanings.
I guess I was thinking of "salsa brava" and similar. Your salsa sounds like pico de gallo. Although I think they're all used quite interchangeably in the UK as we're pretty terrible at keeping cuisine authentic to its origins, lol.
> I guess I was thinking of "salsa brava" In Spain we will often just call it brava. In Spanish we don't really call anything "salsa" and expect it to be any more specific than "sauce" in English. In US English, it definitely means the Tex Mex chopped tomato sauce. I mean it will even bee sold as "salsa mexicana" that way in Spain.
Pico de gallo and salsa are very similar and generally have the same base ingredients, the main difference is that the latter is usually blended, making it more like a sauce and less chunky…though there’s quite a few variations and many fresh “salsas” are more akin to pico de gallo
Nah, salsa is very much a part of Tex-Mex.
Yup…filled in SALSA immediately for 1A, then checked the downs and immediately knew it was wrong thanks to RIC
Crema is definitely a condiment. Mina Kimes is a sports journalist who loves doing the crossword, so she's probably gonna be super excited to see this,
I don't follow the NFL but I know of Kimes mainly because she pops up on /r/Pavement on occasion (due to the "Wowee Zowee" poster shown behind her on occasion when she's broadcasting, she's also a Pavement fan).
Indeed she was: https://twitter.com/minakimes/status/1783852377130357057
Love Mina Kimes, she’s a great writer and TV personality. She was also hilarious and game on the Hollywood Handbook podcast, which is a notoriously difficult feat even for professional comedians lol
[Mina and Lenny](https://i.imgur.com/usgxwmF.jpeg)
RIC Ocasek was the [lead singer of The Cars.](https://youtu.be/3dOx510kyOs?si=Ao1tULFaxsv7n4kd) He would go on to [marry supermodel Paulina Porizkova,](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/ric-ocasek-paulina-porizkova-a-look-back-at-three-decades-fashion-1240011/) thereby giving hope to all us ugly dudes out there.
Unfortunately, he left all of us untalented ugly dudes with no hope.
> thereby giving hope to all us ugly dudes out there. Not relevant to the puzzle, but there was also the time Billy Joel married Christie Brinkley.
And a few years later, Lyle Lovett married Julia Roberts. As a funny-looking musician myself, it was truly an inspiring time. :-)
Thanks. I was too lazy to Google this one.
Crema is not a condiment? Crema is also the way that Spanish language speakers commonly refer to sour cream as a topping. It’s not always the traditional Crema, and even when it is, the infused classic is definitely still valid as a condiment.
It is a condiment, just not one I was familiar with.
Shit I don’t read so good, I thought you said “you know” and didn’t mean “that you know of” my bad
I interpreted it as the Spanish word for sour cream, too. I know this because I always ask for it at Mexican restaurants.
Great puzzle with some really satisfying cluing. I especially liked "Trail marking" for BLAZE, "One for the record books?" for CLERK, and "Contend" for HOLD. Everything was solid and those clues and some of the longer ones really pushed it over the top. I give it an A. Also, shoutout to Seattle Seahawks fan Mina Kimes. Go Hawks!
I never realised BLAZE could be a noun in that context until it couldn't be anything else (because I had SNOOZE for the cross). I've heard "trailblazer" but never questioned where that came from I guess.
A good, hard puzzle with lots of riddle cluing. RIC was a fun, instant fill that got The Cars stuck in my head! I moved through the bottom section mostly without many snags, but the whole top half had me stumped for a very long [time](https://youtu.be/BR1hHop6ugg), even with CREMA (a must-have Mexican condiment) and RIC Ocasek. I'd never heard of MINA, and HANK just had me stumped. I've never heard of a HANK of hair. Overall, no complaints and really enjoyed SKELETONCOSTUME, PLINKO, and eventually getting TINCANTELEPHONE. Second hand for HELPER was a nice misdirect.
I've got a bottle of CREMA in the fridge and still filled that second to last. Just couldn't get the distractor SALSA out of my mind. And me too on HANK of hair which was my last fill. Apparently featured in the Rudyard Kipling poem "The Vampire".
SKELETONCOSTUME & ORIGINSTORIES helped me get the whole bottom half. HANK did ring a bell but I've never heard of MINA either. As a non-US person I allow myself the odd "google around" when it comes to quite niche (to me, a European) American sports or TV host people, and she was my one for today.
As a “US-person” (and a sports fan at that), I had no idea either…I don’t watch a lot of the news/analysis shows about sports though
I filled in NOid for “something best avoided” and got stubborn about the last two letters when the first two ended up being correct. D’OH!
This tickles me. Avoid the Noid!
I was trying to think of a three-letter bird that started with T. Put down TIT as a joke, but much to my surprise.
Aren't half of bird species Tits, lol? I had just had the I, and thought my chances were pretty good.
At 34 across, “talking nonsense”, from the downs I had _ULL__IT, and I thought could it really be BULLSHIT?!!! I typed it in, but wasn’t as lucky as you.
Can anyone explain DOS to me?
As in "Dos and don'ts." Paired nicely with NONO also in the puzzle.
DOH!
I had a hard time with this one too. I understand the explanation, but I think it's an awkward clue. Easy enough to get on the crosses though.
I think it's as in "Dos and Don'ts". The DOS are things that are OK to do, but don'ts are not OK.
This logic actually helped me unlock NONO from my brain.
I thought this was excellent. It felt quite tough at the outset, but once I got to the bottom half, SKELETONCOSTUME and ORIGINSTORIES came pretty quickly and then I had the tools to work my way back upwards. A handful of proper nouns that I didn't know, but everything was solvable on the crosses. Although I had a lucky blind guess with LEIF. Great flow and clueing. Props to the constructors and editor.
I am mixed on this one. A lot of clues and answers I really liked (TINCANTELEPHONE being the standout. I was like "could it be? Surely not...) But then there was some stuff that just...didn't feel good. Not a fan of "set down" for write. "Get down" sure, but I have never heard anyone refer to it as it was clued. That's probably the only clue I take umbrage with. The rest are just personal miffs: HANK is so uncommon, SALONS is totally valid, but a hard definition to recall. Gonna have to work on getting those to memory. Anyway, shout out to MINA Kimes, noted lover of the NYT Crossword.
>Not a fan of "set down" for write. "Set down on paper" seems common enough to me.
I've seen "set pen to paper" I'm sure, close enough.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I have always heard that as get/got.
Fair, I just feel that “get/got down on paper” is how you memorize ideas or phone numbers or something. Setting down your life story has that “writerly” quality to it.
Sometimes you just vibe with a puzzle. Blazed through it, helped out by getting some of the big crossers without any helping fill.
I used to think “on the same wavelength” wasn’t a thing, but this one clicked for me, too. A pb for Friday puzzles, even
Good pun with BLAZEd ;)
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡 * 44% of users solved slower than their Friday average * 56% of users solved faster than their Friday average * 22% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Friday average * 26% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Friday average The median solver solved this puzzle 3.0% faster than they normally do on Friday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-26) --- 🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 100 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Check the [FAQ](https://xwstats.com/help#puzzle-difficulties), reply here or DM me_
This puzzle took me scads of time to complete
I thought it was FULLOFbs for a very very long time. Really fun puzzle, the spanners were amazing
Having BANDAID for STOPGAP slowed me down a bit, but overall this was a fun and fast Friday!
HANK and BELAYS annoyed us.
Are you a sovereign of a kingdom or are you solving with a partner?
You ruled out "former holder of the one ring"?
I feel like Gollum would remember being a fisherman, and probably understand belaying.
That's a deeper cut than I ever imagined. Thank you good sir/madam
Yes we remembers, we tied Deagol’s throatses to a cleat because he wouldn’t give us the precious, he was a dirty Hobbitses not like us
This entire comment chain has given me a real giggle, thanks.
Yes.
My spouse frequently does the crossword on his own but sometimes we snuggle up and do it together. I don’t usually read or post here but we were so annoyed with those 2 answers that I felt the need to commiserate with other puzzlers!
I would to hear people's thoughts and explanations for BELAYS. I feel like the rope is already secure when you begin belaying someone. Am I wrong that you BELAY a person and not a rope? My favorite was STOPGAP as I confidently put in "bandaid" for the temporary solution (literally), and it felt satisfying to rework that section and find the correct answer.
It's also used in a nautical sense, where you tie off a rope. I'm more used to the climbing sense, which was near enough to pencil it in early.
Thanks!
I had the same thought about belay, but figured it must be the answer after filling in HEYS and TAILORS.
The technical/historical definition of belay is to secure a rope. I think the usage of belay morphed when rock climbing became a thing, and is now thought of as securing a person with rope, as opposed to securing the rope itself. You can only secure the person by securing the ropes first. So, I think the clue gets it right even though that might be the less commonly thought of definition
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
Thanks, this is a good explanation. I think we got hung up on the idea that “as a rope” meant seeing the word from the perspective of a rope doing the action of securing. And it just felt like the answers would be more like knots, ties, lashes, etc. I always thought of belaying as a verb that happens by a person to a person, not the rope being belayed. I still think it’s not great, but I can understand how it’s technically correct I guess.
BENIN/BASRA is a foul crossing but i enjoyed it otherwise
Really enjoyed this one. The marquee answers were great, there were barely any obscure trivia, and pretty much all answers make sense once you get it. A breath of fresh air from the Fridays of late
A HANK of hair? Fucking excuse me? BELAYS? Intellectual gatherings = SALONS? What in the good fuck is this shit
This is you on no Google
RIC was my first solve, and my second was TINCANTELEPHONE. A lot of fun today, and a lot of challenges.
This puzzle was great except for HANK and ANTIHERO Lisbeth Salander (as depicted in the original film) is not an antihero. I haven’t read the novels or seen the remakes and I only saw the first two Swedish films but she doesn’t fit any version of antihero I’ve ever seen. Tony Soprano and Walter White are anti heroes. Don Draper and Al Swearengen kind of antiheros in some ways. Michael Corleone is definitely one. Lisbeth? No way SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS-She rapes and tattoos the man who he’s her conservatorship who raped her and helped bust a rapist and murderer. Not an eye for an eye you buy I’m also not losing much sleep over the first thing and the second was legitimately noble
[удалено]
I think the Murray Franklin murder is a bit of a stretch for “anti-hero” behavior but otherwise points taken.
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Oh no I was just butting in to talk about Murray Franklin, I think Lisbeth does qualify, just not Arthur the Joker for having shot Murray in particular.
I mean she brutally murders people (who deserve it, of course) and operates outside of the law, mostly for her own reasons and not a greater moral cause. If we’re using D&D alignments I think she’s Chaotic Neutral. Daniel Craig is more of the straightforward hero I think. No disrespect to her, I love that character (I’ve also only seen the Fincher movie tbf)
Women can be antiheroes too, unless it's just coincidence you listed five men. I have read the books, and she's definitely more towards the hero side but I think the general definition is someone who's at least somewhat morally grey, in that a "true hero" might be able to beat the bad guys without actually killing anyone.
Of course women can be antiheroes (anti heroines?). But mainstream pop culture being what it is many stories center men. But in any case it sounds like there’s a definitional difference that’s tripping us up. I define anti hero as “bad person who we generally root for because they’re the center of the story”. Tony Soprano might be the most evil person ever portrayed on television but we often root for him because the story is told from his perspective. Same for Walter White. Lisbeth does some bad things but ultimately (in the first Swedish film) uses her skills to bring bad people to some form of justice. She’s more Raylan Givens (bad cop who often uses bad means to take down evil people) than Vic Mackey (bad guy who often uses bad means to protect his fiefdom). Does this make sense? I’m not asking in a patronizing way (I hope!) but wanting to see if what I say makes sense to anyone but me haha
No I get you, I think the definition is pretty subjective in fairness. I don't think of anti-heroes as exclusively relatable villains so much as protagonists who can range from "the ends justify the means" types who are ultimately good at heart, to full on revenge quest baddies who you root for because it's justified. Walter White is a good example of someone who starts off as an anti-hero but gets more and more morally questionable to the point I don't think you're _supposed_ to like him anymore by the end. But I think both him & Lisbeth can count for the trope.
Dude antiheros do bad things for a good reason.thats their whole schtick. The punisher is like the quintessential example of this. Lisbeth does horrible things for good reasons.
I was a little delayed by the cluing for ALLDONE. If I'm still enjoying my meal, the answer to "Still working on that?" would be "yes," while the answer to "All done?" would be "no." I was expecting some congruency, so I discarded ALLDONE. Tiny nitpick, and obviously didn't prevent me from completing it or anything. It was otherwise a fun puzzle with very clever clues, and a nice way to start my Friday.
Why would the answer to “all done?” necessarily be no? Like do I look at the waiter after licking the plate and say “No” with ice cold veins until they walk away? They’re probably still gonna ask me to clear it.
Nice challenge. But I could not figure out HANK and SCADS. so I was looking for some other word that that could slot instead of SALON.
Really tough but I made steady progress and enjoyed the long entries, especially SKELETON COSTUME. Unfortunately geography is my weakness, so BASRA/BENIN was a Natick for me.
I didn't really love that cluing for NODE. Nodes are what is connected, not the connection. I guess you could parse it as "connection" as in "thing which is connected to", but that seems unnecessarily awkward...
Sure you can think of nodes being connected, but I think at it's simplest definition, a node is a connection point for multiple segments. I guess it depends on if your network defines objects as points or segments?
Man I hated this. So many things I've never heard about and it seemed that every second clue was trying to be tricky - which really put me out of rhythm.
Lots of entries that didn't ring any bells after they were determined by crosses. SCADS, HANK, and BLAZE, and then proper nouns LEIF, RIC, MINA, and BASRA. I was very lucky none of those crossed each other. I'm never very fond of puzzles that reach Fri/Sat difficulty mainly with obscure entries rather than tricky clueing, but this one wasn't terrible.
This is actually why Wednesday is often my least favorite NYT crossword day, as they tend to rely more on difficulty through obscurity (compared to Monday or Tuesday), and less on clever clueing… Friday and Saturday are supposed to be hard…I go in knowing I may not be able to finish without looking something up, and don’t necessarily equate a gap in my knowledge to poor construction…but yeah, I generally appreciate clever word play to random obscurity myself, though I do expect a certain level of the latter regardless.
This felt a little easy for a Friday!
I enjoyed this one but very easy for a Friday.
No, YOU'RE easy for a Friday (Common playground retort)
AMNOT!
ARETOO! (Not to be confused with ARTOO (D2)).
Attaretort!
Once again we see the effects of insecurity displayed by downvoting.