Games

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

David Leonhardt and his wife, Laura, take on a puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.Jump to: Tricky CluesDeb Amlen is on vacation this week. David Leonhardt, the senior writer who oversees The Morning newsletter, has kindly agreed to step in and talk about today’s puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.FRIDAY PUZZLE — When my colleague Deb Amlen asked me a few weeks ago to spend a day filling in as the Wordplay columnist, I was thrilled. When she told me that I would be writing about a Friday crossword puzzle, I was a little less thrilled and more than a little daunted. Friday, as you all surely know, is one of the week’s most challenging puzzles.I may be a journalist — I’m approaching my 25th anniversary at The New York Times — but I feel more comfortable playing games that are based on numbers and strategy than on language. I was an applied math major in college, and I don’t pretend to be an expert Scrabble player or crossword completer. Fortunately, I am married to somebody who is an expert at language games. My wife, Laura, an obsessive and joyous reader, was happy to help me with the completion of today’s puzzle.Whether you’re more like me or more like Laura, there’s much to savor in today’s puzzle.Tricky Clues1A. We admit it: We couldn’t resist immediately scribbling S-ALSA in response to a “Mexican condiment” of five letters. But that’s why we were using an erasable pen. The error of our ways became clear as soon as we saw that the second letter of the answer needed to be an R, for RIC (2D’s “Singer Ocasek”). With an assist from MINA (the “Kimes” of 4D), I thought back to a delicious meal we ate last month at Tacos El Gordo in Las Vegas. One of the toppings there? CREMA. And, yes, you should endure the lines at Tacos El Gordo if you’re in Las Vegas.11A. “Alternatives to booths, perhaps” may immediately conjure restaurants or, for those of us of a certain age, phones. This uncertainty encouraged us to come up with a longer list of potential booths, and we soon thought of one that was less salient because it rarely appears without its modifier: voting booths. From there, and again with some help from Ric Ocasek and Mina Kimes, we got to MAIL-IN BALLOTS.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

Hanh Huynh carves out a place for himself.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with, well, me. Deb Amlen has stepped out for the week, and in her absence I have the pleasure of writing the Wordplay column for today’s crossword, constructed by Hanh Huynh.Regular solvers may remember Mr. Huynh for his New York Times debut last year. He constructed a Thursday puzzle that featured a dastardly rebus, and to this day it remains the only grid I can remember having really and truly given up on (thankfully, not when I was meant to write the Wordplay column). Mr. Huynh seems to be feeling more charitable toward us this time around — his theme doesn’t require quite as much head-scratching to figure out. But don’t get comfortable: It’s still a Thursday crossword if I’ve ever seen one.Shall we take the lid off and see what’s inside?Today’s ThemeHave you taken a deep, calming breath? Good. Now I can tell you that this puzzle contains a rebus that works differently in Down and Across entries.Whenever I’m faced with a Thursday puzzle, I use my crossings to see whether I can identify some added trickery. My hackles go up especially when there are symbols in the grid — like the circles in this one, for example.Let’s begin our investigation at 21-Across: The “Longtime judge on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’” should be SIMON COWELL. But his name is 11 letters long, and there are 13 squares to be filled. At 9-Down, the “Popular backyard game” appears to be a five-letter word. But bocce doesn’t work with the crossings, and CORNHOLE doesn’t fit … or does it?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

Step into the house of mirrors with Jeffrey Martinovic.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Today’s crossword, by Jeffrey Martinovic, is a doozy, and it reminded me of a seemingly impenetrable puzzle featured in an episode of “The Simpsons”: Professor Provolone’s Picto-Puzzle, which Lisa finds on the back of her lunch kit. The normally sharp Lisa can’t solve the puzzle — and begins to doubt her own intelligence after Bart, Milhouse, Nelson and Martin solve it instantly.I felt a lot like Lisa today, for a few reasons. First, I really was spiraling into despair as I hopelessly stared from this grid’s revealer to its theme entries and tried to make the connection: Had I lost my ability to solve crosswords altogether? When the trick finally clicked — as it tends to do after you stare angrily for long enough — it turned out to be similar to the solution of the Picto-Puzzle (which Lisa did eventually solve). I’ve included relevant scenes from the episode below, should you prefer to theorize about what Professor Provolone and Mr. Martinovic’s riddles have in common. Otherwise, read on to see what the theme is all about.Today’s ThemeToward the end of our numbered Across clues, we learn that a certain “Feature of this puzzle’s grid” also describes “the answers to the six starred clues” (62A). After solving HOITY-TOITY for “Highfalutin” (11D), I expected the theme might have something to do with rhyming reduplication (a process that leads to the creation of words such as hokeypokey, easy-peasy et al.). But other themed entries stymie that theory: At 4-Down, “Hold on, repeat that?” is WAIT, WHAT, and the “Calculus calculation” (46D) solves to a single word, MAXIMUM.But look closely at the letters that make up those answers, and you’ll see that they all share LATERAL SYMMETRY (62A). This means that each letter featured in the themed entries can be split vertically in two halves mirroring each other. The grid, too, features strictly lateral — as opposed to rotational — symmetry, breaking with crossword convention.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

Judy Bowers makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — It’s been over 75 years since the first New York Times Crossword, and language has significantly evolved. And yet there has been little change in much of the field’s crosswordese — i.e. vowel-heavy words that frequently appear in crosswords, but hardly ever apply in everyday speech.We are still just as likely as ever, for example, to encounter H.G. Wells’s “Eloi,” from a novel he wrote in 1895. And though the era of the Oldsmobile has ended, puzzles have yet to stop featuring its final model, the “Alero.” I occasionally explain such terms in Tricky Clues, especially if I’ve just learned them, but improving one’s solving skills is largely a matter of learning these well-worn words by rote.That’s why I have to hand it to Judy Bowers, the constructor of today’s crossword. In this, her New York Times debut, she has managed to do something remarkable with a different constraint — without sacrificing flashes of relevance.Today’s ThemeRead carefully, because the revealer at 54-Down describes just about every part of the crossword in its hint to unlocking today’s theme. We have to identify the “Number of letters in every word of the answers to the starred clues.” Simply put, we’re looking for a number — and since “Plethora” (57A) solves to a fairly straightforward SLEW, we can assume via crossings that it’s the number TWO.Maybe the above number was all you needed for your “aha!” moment. But if you’re like me, you needed more information. And while “Follow our lead!” (32A) is a straightforward DO AS WE DO, other expressions in the theme aren’t so common and may require more crossings to solve: 37-Across, for example, solves to HI MA, I’M UP (its clue being “Morning, mother!”).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

David Kahn makes progress step by step.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Lewis Carroll is said to have popularized the word ladder puzzle, in which the solver is tasked with transforming a four-letter word into another by changing its letters one at a time. The number of “rungs” on the ladder depends entirely on the two words selected. The game has also had other names, including “doublets” and “word-links.” I might have called it “The quip of Theseus.” (Sorry).An impressive word ladder appears in today’s crossword, which was constructed by David Kahn. Traveling from one end of the puzzle to the other reveals a meaningful message. Mr. Kahn, it should be noted, is nearing the top of another ladder, as he inches toward his 200th puzzle for The New York Times. Phew. What’s my excuse?Today’s ThemeThe eight-step ladder in Mr. Kahn’s puzzle begins with a “Nonrenewable energy source”: COAL (1A). From there, we travel through a couple of unremarkable words in the theme set — COOL (21A) and WOOL (30A) — and pause briefly on two energy sources, WOOD (35A) and FOOD (39A). The production of each of these, we learn, contributes to a certain “symptom of climate change” at 36-Across. This entry may be obvious to most solvers since the term is often used interchangeably in discussions about climate change: GLOBAL WARMING.But Mr. Kahn isn’t finished. After trading FOOD’s letters to get FOND (42A) and then FIND (52A), we land on a final “Renewable energy source” that completes the ladder: WIND. And I got that renewable energy source knocked right out of me as I felt the significance of the completed theme.It also seems apt to have “Goes extinct” (49A) as a clue in today’s puzzle after a Sunday crossword by John Rippe and Jeff Chen that tackled this very subject, and which Caitlin Lovinger cited as the first instance in recent memory of being so “emotionally moved by a theme.”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