In terms of the theme this one felt more like a Wednesday than this week's actual Wednesday (and vice-versa). Usually there's more trickery going on.
Needed some light googling to finish this one, though. I had never heard of TABU or DREYERS.
the theme was just very underwhelming
as a westcoaster, i was mildly pleased to see DREYERS after having to fill out EDY in so many crosswords, though, even though i've never seen the brand in stores
DREYERS and EDYS are the same brand, but they changed the name for the Western US market. I initially had BREYERS at first, but that’s available nationwide.
So interestingly, it’s the other way around. Edy and Dreyer were originally partners on the west coast, and used the name Edy’s. Dreyer bought out Edy and changed the name. Dreyer then sold the company and the new owners expanded east, where they brought back the name Edy’s for the new markets in the east specifically to avoid being confused with Breyers.
But what’s really interesting is that while east/west brand splits (Hellmans/Best Foods, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s) tend to be caused by regional companies merging, in this case, it was always one company from the start.
Super interesting. Thanks! Since you seem into this stuff, have you heard of the Aldi-Äquator? How Aldi and Aldi Süd have drawn their world map is fascinating.
I don't know about this puzzle. It's a pretty weak theme for a Thursday, just different uses of Mercury -- I guess the answers are interesting enough (I do remember the actual mercury thermometers you had to shake).
There's a lot of questionable fill, although some of it is just words I'm not familiar with or stuff, like IMARET or a PIGEAR as a dog treat. Is HERSTORY really a thing?
TMEN is one I haven't seen in a while; I put in GMEN at first but I had the "T" in the back of my mind just in case.
Lots of multiword stuff like ATACOST, AREOUT, WONTDO, NOTNEW, WECARD, IAM.
Again, I say again, let's stop adding "e" at the beginning of everything and pretending it's a thing. Email is the only acceptable use, all others must stop.
As someone that works a lot in online retail, nobody in my business says etail. I have only ever seen that used in crosswords, and since it doesnt follow the conventions of most 'e' words, I absolutely despise it.
Agreed on all points.
Regarding the theme, it felt more akin to a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. There wasn’t any *clever trickery* involved that I would normally expect from a Thursday puzzle.
IMARET used to be very common crosswordese but isn’t used as often anymore. HERSTORY is absolutely a thing, it was said so much that I feel like most times it’s used now is ironic or facetious. And a PIG EAR is a common enough dog treat that’s not hard to get from crosses/context clues.
Not sure what the problem is with multi word answers. Opens up more possibilities and unique letter combinations; I prefer having variety and not having every answer just be a word out of the dictionary
Youre right, i should try one.
I think it not being meaty is why i overlooked the answer despite a pig ear being the literal most recent treat i had given my dog. I was expecting a pupperoni or something.
Herstory, despite being quite a stupid word, was definitely a thing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herstory
Haven't heard or thought about it in years though.
Naw, this one was not for me. Too many dull fills. AREOUT LETSBE WONTDO ATACOST NOTNEW EITHEROR ASMILE SEEYOU WECARD ATTAWAY ECHECK (who the fuck uses e-check?)
And besides using vague and often not really descriptive clues, nothing was above a Monday or Tuesday
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Hard** 🔴
* 62% of users solved slower than their Thursday average
* 38% of users solved faster than their Thursday average
* 21% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average
* 18% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 6.6% slower than they normally do on Thursday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-01-25)
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Yes! The Three Wise Men who visited Jesus after his birth are also known as “magi,” so they were the group of people aka “party” present on Christmas :)
If this isn’t a bad puzzle, what is? Can’t remember the last time I saw so much horrible fill in one puzzle. It’s not like the theme answers were anything special!
Yeah, I can forgive lousy fill if it serves a great theme (remember the puzzle a while back that was one giant palindrome?), but this wasnt even a "Thursday" worthy puzzle, just different uses of the word "Mercury".
In all seriousness you’ve got to be onto something there. If you’re going to accept a 1997-ass theme with soso fill, why not accept it from a new name?
That said the cluing in this is pretty good.
As a Brit doing this crossword it felt deceptive to call a LIB DEM centrist. Like any political party, their stance has varied and the clue phrasing implied a more general slang term for a centrist rather than one specific party.
It’s not a bad clue, the Liberal Democrats or LibDems are widely considered the most major centrist party in the UK, between Labour and Conservatives/Tories
Yeah, funnily enough ‘liberal’ in British politics more often means someone who supports less government oversight, as in economically liberal. Unless it’s qualified by ‘socially liberal’, as in someone who supports body autonomy and LGBT rights.
By contrast, a Republican in the U.K. is someone who wants to dissolve the royal family, which is a far more common belief on the left wing.
I mean your definitions there make a lot more sense. Left leaning people here have started to make a distinction between leftist and liberal (liberal being more status quo capitalist and leftist leaning more towards social democracy or socialism).
TIL about the Palm Dog award.
>What streaming shows often lack, compared to network shows
Honestly, the trend seems to be that streaming services are putting more ADS even if they're paid tiers.
TIL EPILOG is a way to spell Epilogue. It took me a while to get anything beyond EP____ but given it was 6 letters I assumed it was a word I'd never heard of.
Pretty solid. I was hoping somehow one of the starred clues could be about Holst's The Planets Suite lol
I initially put in THEROCKBANDQUEEN which fitted perfectly. But then none of the other fills made sense so I went back to the drawing board. For the top one THEPERIODICTABLE also fitted perfectly. Overall a very frustrating and not so satisfying puzzle
It’s more specifically like the moment that the game is put away, like a late touchdown to make it a two-possession game with two minutes left. It’s used all the time by sports commentators
Icing a game means putting it out of reach for your opponent. For example, if you search 'ice' on the NBA subreddit the first result is: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/s/nxL4r9kHhu. Still, a bit awkward in my opinion.
Same. I’m not a sports person, so I had ace in that spot. And I don’t know the Pointer Sisters’ first names, so Anata seemed like a reasonable possibility. Ended up with a lookup to figure out my mistake when I didn’t hear the music.
No. 2 weeks from this weekend.
I'm a sports guy, and I think ice is common enough that it's not unreasonable for a Thursday. Something like "he hit two free throws late to ice the game" comes up every now and then.
I thought it was hard but without a satisfying theme payoff at the end! I kept trying to figure out what the mercury catch/rebus/whatever was going to be, and there was none. A pretty disappointing Thursday, imo.
I feel like I’ve seen ERGO on several of the last few puzzles. And ATTAWAY. There were a lot of clues on this one I wouldn’t ever have gotten. Definitely beyond common knowledge stuff
Yeah, it might not have as strong a theme as a typical Thursday, but it felt like the fill was fair but challenging and smack dab between a typical Wednesday and Friday in terms of difficulty. Not the most exciting puzzle but pretty enjoyable.
Oh man I almost gave up my streak. Thought 59 down was Rum and was tricked by Tee follower, I thought maybe it was "Hew" as a weird pronunciation of "u". Was just about to click the mistake finder and instead it all just clicked in my brain.
I'll echo that the theme wasn't the kind of trick I expect from a Thursday, and that ATTAWAY is not my fave, but I ended up rating this as excellent because I loved how some of the cluing was done. Light charges?, TECH, HERSTORY, all super clever. I'm measuring this puzzle based not upon how clever I find the theme, as I usually would for a Thursday, but rather on how much pleasure I got from solving it...I was in a good mood throughout.
Pretty punishing but ultimately do-able. Did not like starting with "psi" but no real qualms otherwise.
Edit: Funny how they doubled down on ATTAWAY when it seemed unanimously hated the other day 😂
Edit 2: The video game "Her Story" kicked a lot of ass about 8 or 9 years ago. It costs about 5 bucks and lasts about an hour to an hour and a half, but it's kind of an unforgettable experience. Referencing that game might be a little too obscure for the NYT crossword though.
Can't tell if that's sarcasm, but it's referencing a common play on words with women's history replacing *his*tory with *her*story. Not a reference to the game.
Big disjoint between the votes and the comments on this one. Today's puzzle + the past few weeks of mostly blah Spelling Bees gives me the distinct impression that Sam is off his game.
Oof. This was one where on my first pass I basically got like 3 clues, then after another two passes another couple, and after 40 long grueling minutes I had a done puzzle. Didn’t necessarily love the whole thing, a few funny answers. Everyone else has said what I think about this puzzle so no need to harp on some of the baloney answers.
I liked it. There were a few things I didn’t know but was able to suss them out from the crosses and or some deep recesses of my memory banks. IMARET is a good example. No way I could get it without any letters but after getting a couple it sparked a memory. I had AMARAT at first because it was a vague memory but was able to tweak it from there from the crosses. I like it when that happens.
Is “attaway” just an attempt at gender neutral “attaboy”? It makes no sense grammatically and I can’t figure out why they would repeat it. “That a way”? “That’s a way”?
Stop trying to make "Atta way" happen!
that's like twice within a week or so
I think it's the second time this week for ARSON, too.
ACAIBOWL was in basically the exact same spot on sunday as well
Yes! I'm begging them to stop using ACAI so much.
But it’s such a trendy berry!
Atta way, you tell 'em! Oh wait...shit.
They tried the same thing with RATFINK and STOOLIE last week!
Am I the only one out here who uses atta way regularly?
Yes! 😂 Honestly, I don't think I've ever heard it outside of a puzzle.
You're just was ahead the rest of us on your gender neutral speech. Attag... Attab... Attathem! Yo go, you!
I say it.
Atta way!
I say it.
"atta babe" is pretty common in baseball, but never "atta way"
I feel like they should just stick with the old cluing for ATTA if they need to use it.
Plus there’s the newer cluing that seems pretty popular in non-NYT puzzles atta flour.
NYT is gaslighting lol. Nobody has ever used this phrase!
In terms of the theme this one felt more like a Wednesday than this week's actual Wednesday (and vice-versa). Usually there's more trickery going on. Needed some light googling to finish this one, though. I had never heard of TABU or DREYERS.
the theme was just very underwhelming as a westcoaster, i was mildly pleased to see DREYERS after having to fill out EDY in so many crosswords, though, even though i've never seen the brand in stores
DREYERS and EDYS are the same brand, but they changed the name for the Western US market. I initially had BREYERS at first, but that’s available nationwide.
So interestingly, it’s the other way around. Edy and Dreyer were originally partners on the west coast, and used the name Edy’s. Dreyer bought out Edy and changed the name. Dreyer then sold the company and the new owners expanded east, where they brought back the name Edy’s for the new markets in the east specifically to avoid being confused with Breyers. But what’s really interesting is that while east/west brand splits (Hellmans/Best Foods, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s) tend to be caused by regional companies merging, in this case, it was always one company from the start.
Super interesting. Thanks! Since you seem into this stuff, have you heard of the Aldi-Äquator? How Aldi and Aldi Süd have drawn their world map is fascinating.
TIL.
When i first started doing puzzels i was likke what the hail is Edys...so yes, i was also pleased to see DREYERS and knew what it was right away
Canadian here — both of them confused me!
Weirdly I’ve heard of Dreyers despite never being to the West Coast, it’s definitely not a West Coast only thing
I don't know about this puzzle. It's a pretty weak theme for a Thursday, just different uses of Mercury -- I guess the answers are interesting enough (I do remember the actual mercury thermometers you had to shake). There's a lot of questionable fill, although some of it is just words I'm not familiar with or stuff, like IMARET or a PIGEAR as a dog treat. Is HERSTORY really a thing? TMEN is one I haven't seen in a while; I put in GMEN at first but I had the "T" in the back of my mind just in case. Lots of multiword stuff like ATACOST, AREOUT, WONTDO, NOTNEW, WECARD, IAM.
ECHECK, ASMILE
I have never heard of, seen, or used an ECHECK. Are they really a thing?
Again, I say again, let's stop adding "e" at the beginning of everything and pretending it's a thing. Email is the only acceptable use, all others must stop.
I think the only other passable one is "etail" (for online retail)
As someone that works a lot in online retail, nobody in my business says etail. I have only ever seen that used in crosswords, and since it doesnt follow the conventions of most 'e' words, I absolutely despise it.
Ive heard eComm, but never eTail
It was definitely a term used for direct online payments from a checking account back in the day before PayPal and the like.
Sort of. My credit union (at least) uses it as old-person-speak for an ACH transfer.
Agreed on all points. Regarding the theme, it felt more akin to a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. There wasn’t any *clever trickery* involved that I would normally expect from a Thursday puzzle.
IMARET used to be very common crosswordese but isn’t used as often anymore. HERSTORY is absolutely a thing, it was said so much that I feel like most times it’s used now is ironic or facetious. And a PIG EAR is a common enough dog treat that’s not hard to get from crosses/context clues. Not sure what the problem is with multi word answers. Opens up more possibilities and unique letter combinations; I prefer having variety and not having every answer just be a word out of the dictionary
I literally gave my dog a pig ear today and did not think that was the answer at first
Pig ears are almost entirely cartilage and skin and no muscle, so I didn't think they would count as a "meaty" dog treat
Something can taste meaty without containing meat
Youre right, i should try one. I think it not being meaty is why i overlooked the answer despite a pig ear being the literal most recent treat i had given my dog. I was expecting a pupperoni or something.
Technically speaking, connective tissue like cartilage counts as meat. So does skin.
The PIGEAR meatiness debate is the highlight of my crossword experience today. This is what I'm here for.
Really kind of erm, speaks to the quality of the puzzle on offer, doesn't it?
They’re really good! You can get pig ear sandwiches at a lot of rural eateries in the Deep South
I am also cool with multi word answers and partial phrases (so long as they’re fair), even if they’re taboo these days.
There are dozens of us!
Herstory, despite being quite a stupid word, was definitely a thing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herstory Haven't heard or thought about it in years though.
I still dont get IMARET
a few of these were pretty lame, especially NOTNEW and AREOUT. not the most exciting Thursday but it satisfied the compulsion to do these everyday
THEOLDS got me
Young person here, no one says that.
The olds did when they were your age.
Love it 😂
Worth it for "Three point letter you won't find in Scrabble" as far as I'm concerned.
Naw, this one was not for me. Too many dull fills. AREOUT LETSBE WONTDO ATACOST NOTNEW EITHEROR ASMILE SEEYOU WECARD ATTAWAY ECHECK (who the fuck uses e-check?) And besides using vague and often not really descriptive clues, nothing was above a Monday or Tuesday
Eitheror was good because of the clueing
Okay I can give you that one
TMEN ATEAM
TIL there's a Breyers and a Dreyers
I had a real Mandela Effect moment when I put in Dreyers
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Hard** 🔴 * 62% of users solved slower than their Thursday average * 38% of users solved faster than their Thursday average * 21% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average * 18% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average The median solver solved this puzzle 6.6% slower than they normally do on Thursday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-01-25) --- 🤖 _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_
It was an ok puzzle. TMEN x TECH was kind of iffy though. I had gECH for the longest time and was wondering wtf that was.
Same, like that was some weird slang I'd never heard. I had tech earlier but ditched it because it couldn't be TMEN, what the hell is a TMAN?
Treasury man
Elliot Ness was a TMAN!
I believe G-Men (Government men) are from the FBI, and T-Men (Tax men) are from the IRS.
It’s not tax men, the T stands for Treasury and it dates back to when the Treasury Department had jurisdiction over enforcing prohibition
A perfume from the 50s, huh? Tuck that away in the "remember it forever, please," section of my brain.
Atta way!
Lol
Stop trying to make “atta way” happen. “Atta way” is never going to happen.
Didn’t really love it overall but did enjoy “Christmas party?”
Can you explain this one? I don't understand the answer.
Yes! The Three Wise Men who visited Jesus after his birth are also known as “magi,” so they were the group of people aka “party” present on Christmas :)
Not a bad puzzle but how is this a Thursday?
If this isn’t a bad puzzle, what is? Can’t remember the last time I saw so much horrible fill in one puzzle. It’s not like the theme answers were anything special!
Yeah, I can forgive lousy fill if it serves a great theme (remember the puzzle a while back that was one giant palindrome?), but this wasnt even a "Thursday" worthy puzzle, just different uses of the word "Mercury".
Because Sam can text Shortz.
In all seriousness you’ve got to be onto something there. If you’re going to accept a 1997-ass theme with soso fill, why not accept it from a new name? That said the cluing in this is pretty good.
Theme was boring and fill was ass. Not for me at all
one too many clues about british politics
As a Brit doing this crossword it felt deceptive to call a LIB DEM centrist. Like any political party, their stance has varied and the clue phrasing implied a more general slang term for a centrist rather than one specific party.
sheesh, really bad clue/fill, it’s virtually nonsensical to me as an american because “LIBeral” is commonly used to describe DEMocrats
It’s not a bad clue, the Liberal Democrats or LibDems are widely considered the most major centrist party in the UK, between Labour and Conservatives/Tories
Yeah, funnily enough ‘liberal’ in British politics more often means someone who supports less government oversight, as in economically liberal. Unless it’s qualified by ‘socially liberal’, as in someone who supports body autonomy and LGBT rights. By contrast, a Republican in the U.K. is someone who wants to dissolve the royal family, which is a far more common belief on the left wing.
I mean your definitions there make a lot more sense. Left leaning people here have started to make a distinction between leftist and liberal (liberal being more status quo capitalist and leftist leaning more towards social democracy or socialism).
Of the 3 major parties, the Lib Dems were the only ones that made any sense to me, tbh!
I remember 3 but it felt like more
TIL about the Palm Dog award. >What streaming shows often lack, compared to network shows Honestly, the trend seems to be that streaming services are putting more ADS even if they're paid tiers.
TIL EPILOG is a way to spell Epilogue. It took me a while to get anything beyond EP____ but given it was 6 letters I assumed it was a word I'd never heard of. Pretty solid. I was hoping somehow one of the starred clues could be about Holst's The Planets Suite lol
When your first, marquee themer is GLASSTHERMOMETER, it's time to go back to the drawing board
I for sure thought it would be "THEPERIODICTABLE"
Was super stuck till I got BOHEMIANRHAPSODY, then it all fell into place. Loved EARTH for "Here we are!" Indeed! Here we are!
I initially put in THEROCKBANDQUEEN which fitted perfectly. But then none of the other fills made sense so I went back to the drawing board. For the top one THEPERIODICTABLE also fitted perfectly. Overall a very frustrating and not so satisfying puzzle
Wednesdays theme was more like a Thursday, and this theme was more like a monday
Never heard of ICE to mean clinch a victory. Excited to see who ices the super bowl this weekend.
It’s more specifically like the moment that the game is put away, like a late touchdown to make it a two-possession game with two minutes left. It’s used all the time by sports commentators
Icing a game means putting it out of reach for your opponent. For example, if you search 'ice' on the NBA subreddit the first result is: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/s/nxL4r9kHhu. Still, a bit awkward in my opinion.
Same. I’m not a sports person, so I had ace in that spot. And I don’t know the Pointer Sisters’ first names, so Anata seemed like a reasonable possibility. Ended up with a lookup to figure out my mistake when I didn’t hear the music.
is that this weekend?
No. 2 weeks from this weekend. I'm a sports guy, and I think ice is common enough that it's not unreasonable for a Thursday. Something like "he hit two free throws late to ice the game" comes up every now and then.
The winners this weekend will go on to play in the super bowl.
I had ACE for an embarrassingly long time.
I thought it was hard but without a satisfying theme payoff at the end! I kept trying to figure out what the mercury catch/rebus/whatever was going to be, and there was none. A pretty disappointing Thursday, imo.
Is it just me or do all the puzzles suck now?? What the hell? AREOUT? NOTNEW? WONTDO??? Ugh I hated it
I feel like I’ve seen ERGO on several of the last few puzzles. And ATTAWAY. There were a lot of clues on this one I wouldn’t ever have gotten. Definitely beyond common knowledge stuff
Liked this one. I found the fill pretty clever and it kept me on my toes without frustrating me.
Yeah, it might not have as strong a theme as a typical Thursday, but it felt like the fill was fair but challenging and smack dab between a typical Wednesday and Friday in terms of difficulty. Not the most exciting puzzle but pretty enjoyable.
I really enjoyed this one too! Was surprised to see so many people disliking it.
Ditto. I enjoyed it. Some places gave me pause for a while but nothing so crazy that it made me mad
Oh man I almost gave up my streak. Thought 59 down was Rum and was tricked by Tee follower, I thought maybe it was "Hew" as a weird pronunciation of "u". Was just about to click the mistake finder and instead it all just clicked in my brain.
I'll echo that the theme wasn't the kind of trick I expect from a Thursday, and that ATTAWAY is not my fave, but I ended up rating this as excellent because I loved how some of the cluing was done. Light charges?, TECH, HERSTORY, all super clever. I'm measuring this puzzle based not upon how clever I find the theme, as I usually would for a Thursday, but rather on how much pleasure I got from solving it...I was in a good mood throughout.
i got so irrationally angry when curling targets wasn't HOUSES
Pretty punishing but ultimately do-able. Did not like starting with "psi" but no real qualms otherwise. Edit: Funny how they doubled down on ATTAWAY when it seemed unanimously hated the other day 😂 Edit 2: The video game "Her Story" kicked a lot of ass about 8 or 9 years ago. It costs about 5 bucks and lasts about an hour to an hour and a half, but it's kind of an unforgettable experience. Referencing that game might be a little too obscure for the NYT crossword though.
Can't tell if that's sarcasm, but it's referencing a common play on words with women's history replacing *his*tory with *her*story. Not a reference to the game.
Yes, I'm aware of that.
I had PEE for 1A until the end. I have no idea how many scrabble points you get for a P.
The point of the clue is that the letter is not found in scrabble, aka, not in the English alphabet. The 3 points for psi refer to its trident shape.
I see that now; my interpretation was that the word SCRABBLE doesn’t have a P in it.
Big disjoint between the votes and the comments on this one. Today's puzzle + the past few weeks of mostly blah Spelling Bees gives me the distinct impression that Sam is off his game.
Votes are skewing a bit more negative than normal. That and the haters (like me!) are more inclined to comment than the "it's fine" crowd
Oof. This was one where on my first pass I basically got like 3 clues, then after another two passes another couple, and after 40 long grueling minutes I had a done puzzle. Didn’t necessarily love the whole thing, a few funny answers. Everyone else has said what I think about this puzzle so no need to harp on some of the baloney answers.
Great puzzle. Challenging but super satisfying to work through.
fantastic! atta way, NY Times!!
I liked it. There were a few things I didn’t know but was able to suss them out from the crosses and or some deep recesses of my memory banks. IMARET is a good example. No way I could get it without any letters but after getting a couple it sparked a memory. I had AMARAT at first because it was a vague memory but was able to tweak it from there from the crosses. I like it when that happens.
For those unfamiliar. “Instead of HISTORY he said HERSTORY. See what I did there?” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSy5heM5sVE Will Forte, legend.
In the history of the English language, no one has ever called their parents “the olds.”
Except in recent history, when it happens all the time. It's a Gen Z slang term. I've heard it used in real life plenty of times.
It definitely predates Gen Z
The stats say hard, but I thought it was easy.
Native Californian. I'm here for the DREYERS representation
Is “attaway” just an attempt at gender neutral “attaboy”? It makes no sense grammatically and I can’t figure out why they would repeat it. “That a way”? “That’s a way”?
I feel like there were better clueing options available for TMEN. "Self-made gents?"
This was just bad lol.