Happy Thanksgiving! I personally am thankful for family, friends, health, and the New York Times crossword puzzle. I've been blogging on this site for [looks back in blog] nearly seven years. It's been a fun ride, solving the puzzle daily and intermittently reviewing the outcome.
Today's is a first in my memory. The long across answers each have a rebus for the word "dot." Thus, 20A: Iconic Voyager 1 photograph taken 3.7 billion miles from Earth (PALEBLUE[DOT]). This was immediately clear to me, with the first four letters already figured out from crosses. But I wasn't sure what was going on with the rebus, which equally clearly did not fit with 7D: Olivia Rodrigo or Billie Eilish (POPIDOL).
Even figuring out 10A: And so on ([DOT][DOT][DOT]) didn't really help, although I found it interesting that our constructor had found three words beginning with I in that corner that allowed 15A: The third (III) to work out.
It wasn't until I got to 56A right at the end of the solve that all became clear (DOTTHEIS). It's really impressive! Every single I in the puzzle has a dot rebus above it, and there are no other Is in the puzzle at all. Finally I can see why the rebuses don't contribute to the down answers: you have to imagine that they are the dots on the I in the word. Beautifully done.
The original by WEIRDAL
MERCYME! The New York Times crossword puzzle allowed 13A: Aroused, informally (HORNY)! What is the world coming to? The Old Gray Lady is starting to have a modern sensibility. Funny then, that 5D: &#$!@, e.g. (SYMBOLS) is not "swears," or "cusswords," or some similar thing.
64A: Not get reception? (ELOPE) is laugh out loud funny. What an excellent way to exit the solve.
- Colum
Happy Thanksgiving! Beautiful puzzle. Although I almost threw in the ol' towel in the NW corner because, even though I had PALE BLUE DOT and ARAL, I couldn't seem to get the CHAOS and HORNY clues. Finally, CHAP and HOLA came through for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm fine with saying that HORNY passes the breakfast test when I think about it (because sexual references are not all banned, just the more explicit ones). But I too took a long time to get that clue because I didn't think they would go there. Kept trying to think of other meanings of "aroused".
ReplyDeleteBecause I got the revealer before the rebi, I was counting up the number of DOTs and there were four filled in and not a lot of room for the other three. So I thought [DOT][DOT][DOT] was quite cute.
HORNY shocked me, but I had no slowdowns at all, finishing this one in just over eleven. Both yesterday's and tomorrow's took longer for me, each at a little over thirteen. I knew PALEBLUE[DOT] immediately, too, and used that knowledge to my advantage throughout the remainder of the fill. Really elegant puzzle and a fun solve at that.
ReplyDelete