Games

Kevin Curry makes a delicious solo crossword debut in The New York Times.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — I don’t always drink alcohol, but when I do, there is only one drink I want, and it’s the subject of Kevin Curry’s puzzle. You probably guessed the beverage thanks to the black-square design in the grid. That shape alone put a smile on my face.I highly recommend that you finish it — the crossword, not the drink — because there is a nice surprise at the end.Today’s ThemeThe first MARTINI (57A) I ever sipped was a lemon drop, on a vacation to a Caribbean island long ago. It was made with fresh lemons, Grey Goose vodka, passion and love, all topped by a sparkling lemon-sugar rim. The bartender made it with what I can only describe as BRAVURA (59A), working up a sweat as he muddled and poured.My great-aunt Rose used to use the word “luscious” to describe tasting experiences like this. After my first sip, I declared to my companion that this drink was not only luscious; it was life-affirming. Just so you know, this statement was made without the influence of any other adult beverages, because I know what you’re thinking: Deb would not rhapsodize about a drink to this extent unless she was already three sheets to the wind.But to this day, I compare all other MARTINIs to that one.On the other end of the spectrum was a pickle MARTINI I once tried with a friend in New York City. The less said about that drink, the better.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

Alex Eaton-Salners leaves space for the unknown.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Some of the most impressive crossword themes to behold are those that achieve either the ample presence or total absence of a single letter. In a puzzle from February 1999, Janet R. Bender subtly restricted her vowel use to the letter E, managing to squeeze it into her grid a whopping 78 times. In a puzzle from May 2012, Patrick D. Berry used every letter of the alphabet except E. These themes tend to resist apprehension until the grids are entirely filled — which makes the discovery of them all the more satisfying.Alex Eaton-Salners takes a different tack in today’s crossword: He makes letters disappear and reappear at will. He even manages to slide them under our noses incognito. But I’ll make no more pronouncements on the matter and let the puzzle do the rest of the talking.Today’s ThemeYou probably noticed that some letters were missing from the themed clues and that they were easy enough to deduce from the words they should complete: “Lip_on produc_s” (17A), for example, was clearly missing its T’s. But this, dear readers, is hardly half of the riddle: We still have to solve the clue and figure out what those circles in the entry row might be trying to tell us.17A’s answer is INSTANT TEAS (the bold type denotes the circled letters). Why isn’t that third T circled? The pattern is repeated at 28A, when “_lum-colored _lants” leads us to PURPLE PEAS. Here, too, the third P isn’t part of the circled set, so the entry circles must indicate something other than the letters missing from their clues.It all clicked for me at “Fr_endly fac_al tra_t” (55A), which solved to SMILING EYES. Suddenly, I heard what I was meant to see all along: the EYES were the I’s. The sounds of the circled letters were reflected in the second words of their homophonic entries.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

Billy Bratton has decided to extend his stay.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — In the constructor notes that accompanied his last New York Times Crossword, in July 2023, Billy Bratton left us on a cliffhanger:This may be my last one for a while, but I shall return …With these words — and our reaction to them — Mr. Bratton may have unwittingly given us a major hint to today’s puzzle, in which the theme hinges on a synonym for the phrase “Stop right there!” In any case, I’m glad that he has decided to return to us mere months later, as his latest grid offers the perfect Tuesday challenge: It’s crunchy in all the right places, but satisfyingly simple to unwrap. And it doesn’t crumble! (Am I talking about a puzzle or a granola bar at this point? It’s anyone’s guess.)Let’s descend into the valley of the solve.Today’s ThemeThe revealer at 39-Across asks us to come up with another way to say “Stop right there!” But we have to figure out an expression that might also serve as a “hint to the first words of 17-, 23-, 47- and 59-Across.”Let’s run briefly through our theme set:A “Black Friday offer, e.g.” (17A) is known as a DOOR BUSTER, even if most of these deals are no longer worth busting down any doors for.“Something extended to a borrower” (23A) is a LINE OF CREDIT.A “Gymnastics sequence involving tumbling” — or triple-double flips, in the case of Simone Biles — is a FLOOR ROUTINE (47A).The “Expansive medical center headquartered in Rochester, Minn.,” (59A) is the MAYO CLINIC.Per the revealer, we’re concerned with only the first words of these entries: DOOR, LINE, FLOOR and MAYO (if you play Connections, another one of our games, you may find this similar to a round of that game). What could precede each of these words to form four distinct expressions? Another way of saying “Stop right there!” is HOLD IT. And voilà: Hold the DOOR, hold the LINE, hold the FLOOR and hold the MAYO.A note for newer solvers: I tend to unpack the theme here in the order that best explains it, but those revealer “hints” can be used in whatever way helps you crack the puzzle. Let’s say, for instance, you had only the entries containing MAYO and FLOOR. You might then discover HOLD IT, at 39A, and deduce the other themed entries by guessing at expressions with the word “hold.” Some prefer to solve the puzzle entirely before identifying the theme; others kick things off with themed entries. It’s really your journey! I’m just the walking stick. Or something.Tricky Clues16A. “Debriefed?” is an adjective here, and a winking one at that. It signifies someone without briefs on: in other words, NAKED.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

Alan Arbesfeld gives his assent.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Though some may anticipate the arrival of April Fools’ Day, I have found by and large that, for those who have both aged out of schoolyard pranks and tired of try-hard antics from corporate brands on social media, this day is nothing more than an occasion for curmudgeonly skepticism. We should trust nothing and no one, because he or she is probably kidding. (It may also be that, in our “post-truth era,” a day dedicated to fudging the facts feels unnecessary — we’re living it.)I thought that I had approached today’s crossword, constructed by Alan Arbesfeld, with the appropriate amount of suspicion. I nonetheless found myself duped, as any solvers looking to identify what special trickery lies in store may be. The puzzle itself turns out to be entirely serious — it’s the editors who are having a lark.“The twist here is that we’re running a gimmick we wouldn’t normally run on a Monday,” said Tracy Bennett, a puzzle editor for The New York Times. She added, however, that editors had “worked hard to make the clues friendly, both in the theme answers and their crossings,” and that she hoped newer solvers would “enjoy the extra challenge.”While I can’t attest to the value of Mr. Arbesfeld’s theme as an April Fools’ joke, I can certainly recommend it on its own merits. In fact, I’m head over heels for it.Today’s ThemeWhen I finally cracked Mr. Arbesfeld’s theme, I flipped — or the clues did. If you were wondering why a clue like “Malfunctioning, literally?” solved to GNITCA, you needed only to turn upside down. It’s the word ACTING, written upward — ACTING up, as it were. To “Start behaving more responsibly, literally?” reads FAELWENA at first; but we can also read this as turning over A NEW LEAF.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

Jake Bunch makes his New York Times Crossword debut.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — I know people who are strictly solo solvers when it comes to working crosswords. Friends who peek at a puzzle over the solver’s shoulder and say “The answer to 40A is ___” take their lives in their hands. Solo solvers do not want help, and there is nothing wrong with that. As the second New York Times Crossword editor, Will Weng, once said, “It’s your puzzle, and you can do it any way you please.”There are also solvers like me who are grateful to have people in their lives who have decidedly different wheelhouses than they do, because asking for help acts as a kind of social icebreaker. More than once, my younger child, Devin, has saved me from crashing and burning during a tough solve. He is my go-to person when it comes to clues about mythology, computer programming and video games. My older child, Carly, is a great resource when it comes to clues about art and anime. All sports clues that I cannot answer on my own are bounced off my husband, Charles. I have had wonderful discussions about the puzzle with my family.I bring this up because there was one clue in particular in Jake Bunch’s Times crossword debut that absolutely stopped me in my tracks. It has to do with a computer game that is well known, but the clue is particularly opaque, especially since I haven’t played the game. Devin explained it to me and led me to the right answer, so not only did I make progress on that section of Mr. Bunch’s lively puzzle, but I also learned something new and had a delightful chat with my son.It doesn’t get much better than that, in my opinion.Tricky Clues1A. “Thrower of a reception” made me think of a party, but in this puzzle a ball is what’s being received. The answer is PASSER.14A. Once again I was misled, and I loved it. “Place for bucks at the bar?” sounds as if we were supposed to be thinking about tip jars, but the bucks in this clue refer to the movements of a MECHANICAL BULL.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

Dominic Grillo takes me back to my childhood.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — If you are looking for an explanation as to why your crossword puzzle is stained light brown in the center, you are in the right place.Dominic Grillo’s grid is all about nostalgia, and the brown color and shape, along with the answers in the circled squares, may remind you of more carefree days. They may also remind you to eat your vegetables, or at least play with them.Today’s ThemeThat tan oval you see in the center of the grid is a potato. More specifically, it’s a POTATO HEAD (1D and 58D), the toy that allowed children to design their own spud friends by adorning a plastic potato* with body parts and clothes.These included, among other things, a nose, a pair of eyes, a smile, ears, hands and a hat, which can be found on the grid in the circled squares. With the exception of the hat, the circled square groups are in the approximate shapes of their body parts (e.g., the “smile” is a semicircle). Nice touch, Mr. Grillo. That must have been tough to do.*Fun toy history fact: Mr. and Mrs. POTATO HEAD (the honorifics were dropped by the brand’s owner, Hasbro, in 2021) originally contained a set of parts that were meant to be pinned to a real potato or other vegetable. In response to consumer complaints about rotting vegetables, the manufacturers included a plastic body with the parts in 1964.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

Rich Katz twists our words in the wittiest way possible.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — You may pooh-pooh mnemonic devices as childish things, like Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (for the notes of the musical staff) and ROY G. BIV (for the order of colors in the rainbow).The device at the heart of Rich Katz’s crossword, however, serves not just as a singsong memory aid but as a map to his wordplay. I’ll say no more for now, except that I’d hardly need a mnemonic for today’s puzzle: I’m so delighted by it that I’ll have no trouble remembering it for a long time to come.Today’s ThemeOur revealer arrives early at 19-Across, and it’s a good thing. Between starred clues and highlighted entries, we’ve got a lot to figure out.The revealer tells us that a certain “mnemonic device for turning 54-Across” is a “hint to the answers to the starred clues.” But what does “turning” a crossword entry mean? “Toolbox tools” (54A) is easy enough to guess: The answer is SCREWDRIVERS. And I trust that at some point most of us have learned the rhyme that guides such tools’ movements: RIGHTY TIGHTY, LEFTY LOOSEY (19/36A).Meanwhile, our starred clues are still awaiting elucidation. Why does “Closefitting” (9A) solve to SKIN? And how is LEAF “Like some paper and tea” (39A)? The first of these should read SKINTIGHT, and the second should be LOOSE-LEAF. (Can you see where this is headed? I’m getting giddy all over again.)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

Laura Dershewitz and Katherine Baicker make their collaboration debut in The New York Times.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — A handful of clues in today’s crossword, which was constructed by Laura Dershewitz and Katherine Baicker, share almost identical wording — a nod, perhaps, to a different kind of matching contained in the puzzle’s theme — so, let’s take a minute to talk about twin clues. Actually, since the wording of pairs in this puzzle isn’t completely identical, we’ll call them fraternal twin clues.Newer solvers may wonder why, if a clue like “Fairy tale monster” (36D) solves to OGRE, a later clue reading “Fairy tale monsters” (47D) doesn’t solve to “ogres,” but to GIANTS. The answer is anticlimactic, but I’m going to say it anyway: “Ogres” would be too easy. Clues never repeat by accident, and repetition exists only to misdirect you or to add variety. In the case of “Get moving” (1A) and “Get moving?” (6A), we have to interpret the same words in two different ways. To “Get moving,” as in to travel with some urgency, is to SCOOT. But “Get moving?” uses a question mark to indicate an unlikely, more forceful use of the phrase: to PROD someone — a cow, perhaps — to go somewhere.Now, shall we get solving?Today’s ThemeWhether you learned about the art of “fallacious argument” (34A) on your high school debate team or by listening to American politicians speak, I hope you were able to employ it here as a phonetic “hint to the answers to the starred clues.”At 17-Across, a “Mint on a pillow, maybe?” is our first of these clues. We find such an amenity most often in a HOTEL SUITE — and it happens to be a SWEET. That makes it a HOTEL SUITE SWEET, for those following along. And wouldn’t you consider “Pippi Longstocking” (27A) a kind of PIGTAIL TALE?I trust you’re liking the sound of this. Ms. Dershewitz and Ms. Baicker have deployed an AD HOMINEM (34A) attack on our senses by adding homonyms to each starred entry. My favorite of these was the spanner at 57A: “Mother superior?” is a SECOND-TO-NONE NUN.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