Games

Michael Schlossberg sugarcoats the truth.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Over the centuries, English speakers have come up with several creative ways of avoiding vulgarity. Minced oaths are euphemistically rendered expressions of profanity or obscenity that gained popularity among playwrights of the Elizabethan era. Bowdlerization began a few hundred years later, when a well-meaning couple sought to make Shakespeare more family-friendly. And today, the teens use algospeak to avoid censors on TikTok, often using emojis in place of words.While I cannot confirm that Michael Schlossberg constructed today’s crossword with any of those strategies in mind, I can tell you that solving his puzzle will give you a particularly creative way to express your delight about what lies inside the grid.Today’s ThemeI can honestly say that I let out a “Little laugh” (53D) when I entered the revealer of Mr. Schlossberg’s puzzle (though mine sounded a little more like a “hehe” than a TEHEE).“What you might cry upon recognizing this puzzle’s ingredient list?” (62A) requires first solving the entries with gray-shaded squares: 17A, 20A, 32A, 42A and 54A. These yield a recipe of MILKSOP, COCOA BEACH, BUTTERFINGERS, SUGAR SNAP PEAS and VANILLA ICE.When mixed together, the terms in bold elicit a delicious confection that doubles as an interjection — OH, FUDGE!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Justin Werfel makes his debut in the New York Times Crossword.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — If you tried your hand at solving Monday’s puzzle, constructed by Malaika Handa, digging into today’s grid might give you a feeling of wordplay déjà vu, in that yesterday’s theme also relied on various interpretations of a common idiom. But I can assure you that its creator, Justin Werfel, and Ms. Handa didn’t arrange for their grids to appear on consecutive days. As Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor for The New York Times, has explained in the Easy Mode newsletter — which I recommend to any beginners looking to improve their solving skills — eerie coincidences in the Times Crossword are just that: coincidences.Mr. Werfel’s debut crossword for The Times, however, is no matter of chance: It takes creativity, diligence and attention to detail for a constructor’s puzzle to make its way to publication, and I found this one to be a winning combination of all three. I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.Today’s ThemeWhat do a door-to-door salesman, a cathedral worker and an acclaimed experimental neurologist have in common?First, let’s identify the characters in question: Our salesman is WILLY LOMAN (16A), from a classic Arthur Miller play. QUASIMODO (35A) is the “Victor Hugo character who works at Notre Dame.” And IVAN PAVLOV (47A) was the Nobel Prize-winning scientist “who conditioned dogs to salivate.”Now, let’s consider the revealer, which asks for an expression that means “Sounds familiar” (57A). The answer is RINGS A BELL. And this is the “action associated with” the three men above: Loman rang doorbells, Quasimodo tolled the church bell and Pavlov used a bell to make dogs think it was dinnertime. Ding, ding, ding! We have our answer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Malaika Handa takes her turn.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — It is uncanny to realize, when admiring the range of her constructing skills, that Malaika Handa made her New York Times Crossword debut just over a year ago. After introducing herself with a rebus puzzle — which is a feat in itself — Ms. Handa brought us a Friday collaboration with Erik Agard, an early-week puzzle with a pithy theme and a beautiful themeless grid of her own.Since I joined The Times, I have learned that the effort to have a crossword published on every day of the week is known as “hitting for the cycle,” taken from the baseball expression. Whether or not that is Ms. Handa’s strategy here, I’m thrilled to see her flexing her talents at the top of the solving week.Today’s ThemePuzzle editors occasionally suggest the use of circled letters in a grid where the theme might otherwise be too subtle to notice. In this case, however, the circles were Ms. Handa’s original suggestion for her theme, the discovery of which may induce a groan.“Mischievous little devils” are IMPS (12A), which gives us I and M in one set of circles. The same letters appear in RIMS (22A), and again in IMAGE (43A). But here’s the secret: 16-, 29- and 47-Across are part of the theme, too. How? Because they reveal the way in which a certain expression for “Things could not be going better for me!” (64A) serves as a “hint to the placement of the circled letters.”What do SNAKE EYES (16A), a CLASS ROSTER (29A) and a CINNAMON BUN (47A) have in common? Each one is a different kind of ROLL. And the I’s and M’s sit on top of them. Yes, you’ve guessed it by now: The mystery phrase is I’M ON A ROLL.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Eli Cotham makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Let’s say that you’ve decided to make your very first crossword puzzle. Where do you start?There are many good resources for learning the rules of construction: The New York Times Crossword team’s series on how to make a puzzle, Patrick Berry’s excellent guide, the Daily Crossword Links resource list, as well as tips and tricks that can be picked up from experienced constructors on Facebook (Cruciverb and Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory) and Discord.But there’s something else that distinguishes constructors who get published versus those who don’t. You have to do the hard work of seeking out fresh words and phrases with which to fill a grid, and add them to your word list. Prune out the fill that is nonsensical or boring. And you need to spend the time creating clever clues that are not simply copied and pasted from other puzzles.Ostensibly, the reason you are making a puzzle is to entertain (the bragging rights are a given here), which is an admirable goal. But that means you can’t just stuff a grid with any old fill.Experienced solvers know the difference between puzzles packed with lively, unusual fill and those where constructors have relied heavily on the autofill feature of their crossword-building software.This is Eli Cotham’s New York Times Crossword debut, and he understood the assignment, so to speak. The double-stacked grid spanners are jaw-droppingly good, and the surrounding fill holds the grid up in a pleasing way. In addition, the puzzle editors helped Mr. Cotham polish his clues for maximum interest.Well done, Mr. Cotham. I’m looking forward to solving your puzzles in the future.Tricky Clues21A. I knew the drink in the clue “Half of a rum-based cocktail’s name” was a MAI Tai, but I wasn’t sure whether the half that Mr. Cotham wanted was supposed to be MAI or Tai. What to do? Well, I filled in the AI and then solved 1D (MADAM), which gave me my answer.23A. If “Play things” referred to toys, the clue would have been one word. Since it’s two, we need to think about what “things” are part of a play. The answer is ACTS.43A. Does anyone else have traumatizing flashbacks to standardized exams when they see an analogy clue? No? Just me? This one (“Con : Spanish :: ___ : French”) is looking for the French equivalent to the Spanish word “con,” which means “with.” The answer is AVEC.45A. The “Start of an apology” is usually “I’m sorry,” but here it’s MEA, as in “mea culpa.”49A. This not only made me laugh, but it also hit me in the gut, which is what I imagine GAS STATION SUSHI does. I don’t know anyone brave enough to try sushi at a gas station, but I do know someone who once ate airplane sushi on a 20-hour flight. The exact type of drama one might expect ensued.The clue “Shell fish?” is a veiled capital clue, which means that “Shell” is deliberately placed at the beginning of the sentence to obscure the fact that it really is a proper noun (Shell gas stations).57A. “Service agreement” can have different meanings. It can be a contract for services rendered, or have something to do with racket sports. In this puzzle, however, the “service” is a religious one, and the “agreement” is AMEN.59A. As you are solving a Friday puzzle, you probably know this: If a clue is in a certain language, the answer must also be in that language. “Saisons chaudes” is French for “hot seasons,” so the answer is ÉTÉS, or “summers.”6D. These “Cool-down stretches?” are not the slow exercises you do after a workout. They are stretches of time, and the times things cooled down quite a bit were the ICE AGES.9D. I loved this one. The “Game with a hands-down winner?” is TWISTER. This is a great clue that is both clever and brings back good memories.29D. Before you rack you brain for a word ending in K (“Something ending in ‘K,” perhaps”), the answer is RACE, which can be measured in kilometers and referred to as a __ K RACE.38D. One of the funniest comments to appear on nytimes.com, in my opinion, was a response to a seared steak recipe from Cooking. I would like to be friends with this woman.The New York TimesOh, sorry: “One way to prepare a steak” is TARTARE.Constructor NotesHi everyone, I’m proud to present my New York Times debut puzzle. I’m a Realtor in the Portland, Ore., metro area and have been building puzzles (mostly bad ones) for a few years.I built this grid without having any specific seed words in mind; all I knew was that I wanted four fun and fresh words for the long slots. I found GAS STATION SUSHI first, and figured that it was basically a pass/fail term for editors: If it failed, it would take the whole puzzle down with it.Once I stopped worrying about that — I’ve failed before, and I will again — I seeded that half of the puzzle with it and seeded the top half with AN HEIR AND A SPARE, which, surprisingly, had never been used in a Times crossword. By the way, the clue I submitted for AN HEIR AND A SPARE was “Two princes?” The editors changed it, presumably so no one would get earwormed by the Spin Doctors song. I am happy that my GAS STATION SUSHI clue survived. I was batting around different variations of “a little fishy,” “fish in a Shell,” before my much quicker wife, Nicole, landed on the obvious: “Shell fish.” Gold.The lesson I got from the acceptance of this crossword is that the best entries for a themeless puzzle are the ones that are the closest to being unacceptable. There’s a fine line between a clue being fresh and fun and being too narrow, esoteric or colloquial.Big thanks go out to the aforementioned Nicole and the good folks on Crosscord, the Discord crossword community, who have helped me improve my skills. I’ll be back!Join Our Other Game DiscussionsWant to be part of the conversation about New York Times Games, or maybe get some help with a particularly thorny puzzle? Here are the:Spelling Bee ForumWordle ReviewConnections CompanionImprove Your Crossword SolvingWork your way through our guide, “How to Solve the New York Times Crossword.” It contains an explanation of most of the types of clues you will see in the puzzles and a practice Mini at the end of each section.Want to Submit Crosswords to The New York Times?The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online.For tips on how to get started, read our series “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle.”The Tipping PointAlmost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.Spoiler alert: Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.Trying to get back to the main Gameplay page? You can find it here. More

Brandon Koppy predicts our futures.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — Constructors’ brains are fascinating to me. They tend to notice things about language that most other people don’t see. Some constructors make excellent puzzles that are all about playing with words, but others take it a step further: They add a visual element to the solving fun.I tend to admire the visual puzzles because I have never had much luck making them. My brain just doesn’t work that way.But Brandon Koppy’s brain does. He has made 16 crosswords for The New York Times, and a few have had interesting visual elements. Today’s puzzle does too, though they may not be there for long.There might be a bit of confusion about how to fill in this grid, so I will explain the mechanics in the Theme Section.Today’s ThemeI enjoyed Mr. Koppy’s puzzle immensely, but I also had questions about how solvers who use different platforms would fill it out and be marked as having completed it. As a public service, I will relay what the puzzle editors told me when I asked them about the mechanics of solving this grid. No, don’t thank me. This is why I make the medium-size bucks.So you may be asking yourself this: How do I, a user of ___ platform, fill in this puzzle and get credit for being correct?Excellent query. That sort of curiosity is why you are such a good solver. In Mr. Koppy’s puzzle, working with the shaded T squares is not the same on web and iOS devices as it is on Androids.If you are solving on the web or iOS: Please do not type anything inside the T squares, even though you can.If you are solving in an Android environment: There is a note in this version that says “This puzzle contains several pre-filled squares. For a correct solution, tap into each and enter a blank rebus.” Here is the way that works:1. Click into the blank cells.2. Open the rebus.3. Hit “Done” on the keyboard to close the rebus.If you are still having trouble getting a correct solution, you can try the following: Enter any of the following in each pre-filled square (they just won’t be very visible):TBLANKEMPTYNOTHING— (dash)_ (underscore)Mr. Koppy’s theme is a pun on TEA LEAVES (56A), which are used to predict someone’s future. (I mainly just compost them, but if you like to read TEA LEAVES, you do you.) The TEA is represented by shaded squares that contain pre-filled Ts. When the puzzle is completed, the Ts should “leave,” or disappear.When the Ts are visible, the entries are legitimate words and phrases, but those answers don’t work with the clues we’ve been given. If we ignore the Ts, or mentally make them leave, the entries make much more sense.For example, at 15A, the clue is “Regal figure on a tarot card.” The answer including the Ts, TEMPTRESS, might work if a temptress card were a thing, but that entry doesn’t address the word “regal” in the clue. If we drop the Ts, the answer becomes EMPRESS. The Down answers work the same way: The answer to the clue “Fix” is TRIG, which does not make much sense. But if the T leaves, we wind up with RIG, a synonym for “fix.”Tricky Clues1A. The “Zin” in “Zin alternative” is short for Zinfandel wine, and an alternative to that may be CAB, or Cabernet.4A. In case the emoji does not come through on some of the solving platforms, the American Sign Language (or ASL) sign in “In which 🤟means ‘I love you,’ for short” is a fist with the thumb, index finger and pinkie extended.17A. The phrase “big part” in “What has a big part in ‘The Ten Commandments’?” is a pun. According to the Old Testament, the RED SEA parted in a big way.37A. I thought that “Mobile home?” might have something to do with where you put your cellphone to charge, but this home is the kind of SHELL that underwater creatures wear on their backs.60A. OK, I laughed. A mullet is a kind of fish, and its “resting place” might be in some coral, but that’s not where this clue was going. This mullet is a hair style, known for being “business in the front” (short), and “party in the back” (long). Mullets rest on the NAPES of their wearers’ necks.42D. The “Martian who wears a green helmet and skirt” is MARVIN, the “Looney Tunes” character.44D. The “Sticks on a table, maybe” are not chopsticks. They are pool CUES.53D. I love clues asking you to think about parts of speech. The answer to “Last but not least?” is VERB; think about the definition of “last” as “to persist.”Constructor NotesMy original submission actually omitted the shaded squares — I was worried it would be too hand-holdy or something. But I think the presentation tweaks the puzzle editors added are pretty cool and do a good job of illustrating the theme.This was a fun one to stitch together, and I hope you enjoy solving it!For any constructors interested in this type of grid, I have a tutorial on my website.Join Our Other Game DiscussionsWant to be part of the conversation about New York Times Games, or maybe get some help with a particularly thorny puzzle? Here are the:Spelling Bee ForumWordle ReviewConnections CompanionImprove Your Crossword SolvingWork your way through our guide, “How to Solve the New York Times Crossword.” It contains an explanation of most of the types of clues you will see in the puzzles and a practice Mini at the end of each section.Want to Submit Crosswords to The New York Times?The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online.For tips on how to get started, read our series “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle.”The Tipping PointAlmost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.Spoiler alert: Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.Trying to get back to the main Gameplay page? You can find it here. More

Juliana Tringali Golden nips our worries in the bud.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — After being ground down by last week’s wickedly challenging Wednesday puzzle, I was bracing myself to receive a similar thrashing in Juliana Tringali Golden’s crossword. To my relief, Ms. Golden’s grid was comparatively uncomplicated, and the search for themed entries made me smile, rather than suffer.This puzzle is also aptly themed for a certain holiday that many countries celebrate on May 1. Does that give you any scents of what to expect?Today’s ThemeAt 1A: The “Disney princess who sings ‘A Whole New World’” is JASMINE. At 8A, a “Basic yoga position” is LOTUS. These answers are two examples of WALLFLOWERS, a term that refers to “Shy sorts” and here describes “the answers on this puzzle’s perimeter.”What’s the name of a flower that might appear at a “Rainbow’s end” (39D), for instance? VIOLET. How about one for an “East Egg resident in ‘The Great Gatsby’” (48D)? It wouldn’t be Jay or Nick, but DAISY. Most of these flower names are garden-variety (yuk, yuk), but you can reveal a couple of the trickier ones below.67A. “Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos”FREESIAWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Michèle Govier has us dwelling on the details.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — The board game Clue was invented in the 1940s and was intended chiefly as a wartime distraction for Britons experiencing air-raid blackouts. Since then, however, it has developed significant cultural influence: A 1985 film of the same name is a cult classic; tropes of gameplay are the subject of contemporary satire; flashes of the board’s campy dinner-party theatrics have appeared in more recent films such as “Knives Out” and its sequel, “Glass Onion.”It might be said that today’s crossword, constructed by Michèle Govier, contains its own nod to the game. The stakes of this puzzle, by contrast, are thankfully benign, but solving it makes for delightful detective work. We should dive in posthaste, though — I’m so eager to explain the grid that I already have “flames, flames on the side of my face.”Today’s ThemeLooking at the grid, solvers may note that each vertical cluster of circled letters seems to zig and zag ever so slightly. At 62-Across, we’re told that these circles represent a certain expression meaning “Space to maneuver.” I recommend cracking a few entries elsewhere in the grid before returning to this clue since the circled terms we’re looking for are spread among so many entries, both Down and Across.In the bottom left corner, the circles spell PANTRY. Toward the bottom right corner, we answer a handful of clues to get ATTIC. At this point, I became fairly confident that the second word in the revealer was ROOM. And what do these strings of circles do? They WIGGLE. Ha! See if you can uncover the remaining WIGGLE ROOMs (62A) on your own: There’s a PARLOR, LOUNGE and STUDY left to find.Tricky Clues10A. In clues like this one — “Self-care?” — always mind the question mark. It tends to indicate a different interpretation from the one that’s most obvious. Here, the clue refers to a state of caring purely about oneself — i.e., EGO.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Tom Locke makes his New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Mondays have long been known to feature the easiest of the week’s crosswords at The New York Times. The clues tend to be more straightforward than those that appear in weekend puzzles, and their entries are less obscure.So it can be tempting to take the craft of a Monday puzzle for granted, as though it were scrabbled together mindlessly by its constructor. But Tom Locke, who makes his New York Times debut with today’s crossword, has achieved a grid and theme that Sam Ezersky, a puzzle editor for The Times, described as “wildly, wildly elegant.”Mr. Ezersky and his colleagues were particularly impressed that the grid that had wowed them came from a debut constructor. “It’s staggering how tight it is,” he said. We might let the editors’ astonishment be our invitation as solvers to look more closely at the beauty of each crossword grid, not only for its wordplay (which will always be a personal highlight), but also for the skill of a constructor who sets every word down so neatly in its place. Does that count as taking some time to stop and smell the proses? I’ll work on that one while you solve.Today’s ThemeA certain idiom for a “Public uproar” (65A) serves as our “phonetic hint” to the theme entries in today’s grid. That is, it does if you’re familiar with the idiom. The phrase HUE AND CRY has roots in Medieval Latin, describing the outcry in pursuit of a felon. And though the expression now refers to a more general public clamor, it is rarely used. (Should we do it? Should we make hue and cry happen?)Returning to our other themed entries, we can identify three HUEs mentioned in the grid. The “Marine creature that can weigh over 400,000 pounds” (17A) is a BLUE WHALE; to “Bar” outsiders “from joining a private club” (28A) is to BLACKBALL them; and “Chardonnay or pinot grigio” are examples of WHITE WINE. There’s no phonetic ambiguity in these HUEs: Mr. Locke’s revealer instead describes the second halves of the entries. WHALE, BALL and WINE are all homonyms of words that mean CRY: wail, bawl, whine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More