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Brad Wiegmann figures he can trick us. And he does.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — For better or for worse, the New York Times Crossword is tailored to an American readership. This can lead to frustrating moments for international solvers, and I sympathize: Even after 15 years in the United States, I am likely to stumble upon a tidbit of trivia that is as mundane to my U.S. colleagues as it is alien to me.Such was the case in today’s crossword, which was constructed by Brad Wiegmann. The last of his themed entries played on the name of an American organization I’d never heard of, resulting in several minutes of utter discombobulation. Did this entry stump you, too? Or was this just one of those days when I’d have done better by staying under the covers?Turn on your headlamps, and let’s shed some light on this grid.Today’s ThemeOne might say that Mr. Wiegmann is counting on your confusion with his themed clues, each of which seems to provide nothing more than a pair of names.“Nicholson and Nicklaus, e.g.?” (19A) refer to two celebrities with the first name JACK. We can refer to these men, wittily, as ONE-EYED JACKS, because each of their last names has only one I — phonetically spelled as EYE — in it.In the case of “Soren Kierkegaard and Chris Isaak, e.g.?” (26A), the double A’s are evident. Since these men don’t share first names, we can just call them DOUBLE-A GENTS. Yuk, yuk.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

You can find several ways through this puzzle by Christina Iverson.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — How Christina Iverson manages to balance her time between editing crosswords for The New York Times and constructing puzzles of her own, I will never understand. I can barely carve out the mental space to journal when I wake up before the crush of formal writing obligations overtakes me.As it turned out, having a mind consumed by the day-to-day of office life was exactly what I needed in order to discover the theme of Ms. Iverson’s latest crossword. It took only the knowledge of a certain workplace item — and understanding a clue’s witty reinterpretation of its purpose — to discover this crossword’s secrets.Shall we uncover them together?Today’s ThemeAs a former competitive punner, I am consistently impressed by the myriad ways in which constructors execute wordplay within the constraints of a standard crossword grid. Some attempts may inspire more groans than others, but their creativity is always to be admired.In today’s grid, Ms. Iverson has taken great pains to make a certain “Spring-loaded office device” serve as “a collective hint to 16-, 26-, 34- and 41-Across” (54A). That device is a THREE-HOLE PUNCH. Let’s take a look at the entries cited in this revealer to see how it all binds together, shall we?The “Flaw in an argument” (16A) is a LOGICAL FALLACY, which is a rhetorical hole.A “Void” (26A) is a physical hole (but contemplate it too long, and it can become an existential one): EMPTY SPACE.One’s “Messy living area” (34A) might be referred to as a PIGSTY — a hole (derogatory).“Many a beverage ending in ‘-ade’” (41A) is a FRUIT DRINK. And this, reader, is the punch.Tricky Clues14A. “France’s longest river” is not the one seen — or Seine, I should say — in Paris. It is the LOIRE, which stretches just over 625 miles across the country.29A. My fitness regimen consists of walking the dog and taking public transit in New York City, so this “Weightlifting item for a biceps routine” was unfamiliar to me. It’s called a CURL BAR, apparently — just like the place I get my hair styled.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

Samantha Podos Nowak makes her New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — A long crossword entry is not necessarily a complex one. Some of them may, in fact, come to the average solver quite naturally while shorter answers remain just out of reach. Today’s crossword is just so: Samantha Podos Nowak, in her New York Times debut, has crafted a grid in which the longest answers happen to be some of the easiest to deduce.Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor for The Times, emphasized this fact in describing the strength of Ms. Nowak’s puzzle. “We thought she did a nice job of making the longer answers fun,” Ms. Iverson said, explaining that Ms. Nowak’s theme required a number of shorter answers because of the constraints of the grid.Ms. Iverson also hinted at a feature in today’s puzzle that is a rare occurrence on a Monday: the debut of a three-letter entry — this one regarding a certain cinematic universe. “Superhero fans will be excited,” she said.Don your capes, solvers, and let’s get cracking.Today’s ThemeMs. Nowak has offered us a delicious theme and no shortage of places to discover it. The clues at 35- and 37-Across share the revealer: “some ice cream confections … or a hint to the second, fifth, eleventh and fourteenth rows of this puzzle.”There’s nothing obviously connected about any of the entries in these rows. Looking at the second row — SCUBA, NANAS, YER — for example, it seems as if the revealer must hold the key. (I mean, unless YER NANAS SCUBA, in which case, more power to them.)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

Julian Xiao opens our solving weekend with a challenging Friday puzzle.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Before we discuss Julian Xiao’s excellent puzzle, I would like to ask you all a question.How is it March already?As I get older, time seems to pass more quickly, and I feel rushed to pack in all of the things I want to do with my life. We all move at higher speeds now, too. With the pages of the calendar flying off at an ever-increasing speed, I decided that it was time to reflect upon my original stance on the nature of speed solving, which, by definition, is also rushed. It has its place at tournaments, of course, but I have always felt that a crossword puzzle is like a glass of fine wine: It should be savored, not chugged.When you rush through a crossword — whether there’s a prize in it for you or not — you miss out on some of its best qualities, such as entries you’ve never seen before, clues that are so clever that you wish you had thought of them and the high-wire act that constructors and puzzle editors pull off to make a creative theme idea work.I’m happy to say that my opinion has not changed. To continue the wine metaphor, crosswords should be enjoyed. Puzzle lovers should take their time moving through the clues to appreciate the wordplay and the mental tug of war between the constructor and the solver. They should, in a sense, swish the puzzle around in their mouths and allow its essence to roll over their tongues before spitting it discreetly into the bucket at their sides.You get the idea. Sitting down to fully enjoy a crossword is a time commitment, but it is time well spent.Julian Xiao made his New York Times Crossword debut in January in a collaboration with Ben Tolkin. This is the first one he constructed on his own, and it’s a good one. I found it fairly challenging until I hit the halfway mark, and then I had a breakthrough and was able to fill in a lot of the puzzle.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

Esha Datta’s second New York Times Crossword is a nice illustration of the genre.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — When solvers open a crossword, whether it’s in print or on a mobile device, they expect to see a blank grid and a list of written clues. They generally don’t expect to see pictures where their words should be, but here we are.After the initial shock wears off, the questions begin: Why are there pictures in my crossword puzzle? (Because.) Who drew them? (Daniel Savage, an illustrator in Los Angeles.) Are the puzzle editors doing this because I once complained about the Thursday themes? (Probably.)Despite the unusual clue list, this puzzle by Esha Datta is not hard to solve. The nontheme clues are fair and contain some clever wordplay, but the picture clues still need to be worked out, so there’s some challenge. I think that this crossword would be an excellent first Thursday puzzle for a solver to tackle.This is Ms. Datta’s second in The Times. Her 2023 debut was the result of her completion of the 10-week Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship, which pairs constructors from underrepresented groups with New York Times puzzle editors.By the way, please make sure your device is updated to the latest version of the New York Times Games app, or print out the puzzle to see it in full. There is a note at the top that says: “This puzzle is intended to have picture clues. If you are solving on an app that hasn’t been updated, you might see a description of the missing image file instead of the intended clue. If you aren’t able to update your app, you can solve online or in print to get the full solving experience.”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

In his New York Times debut, Greg Snitkin has finally made it.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Today, Feb. 28, would normally be the end of the month. But since 2024 is a leap year, we have the luxury — or the misfortune, depending on your opinions about February — of one extra day before March hits. What are we going to do with ourselves?Since you don’t have to worry about the first of the month just yet, kick your feet up and try your hand at solving today’s crossword, constructed by Greg Snitkin in his New York Times debut. Unlike the month in which we currently find ourselves, it requires no great leaps to understand.Today’s ThemeThe thing that ties today’s themed entries together might be described, per the revealer at 53-Across, as “The main takeaway.” But what could that takeaway — which also must be “considered in three different senses” — be?Our big hint, I think, comes at 33-Across. “Someone terrorizing kids in a 1986 Stephen King novel” is somewhat generically described as a SCARY CLOWN, but most of us know this monster as “It” (or as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, but that name hardly fits into a standard grid). Once we learn about the HOKEY POKEY (41A) — the “Participation dance in which you ‘turn yourself around’” — we can deduce the revealer and its meaning. That’s WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT (53A), indeed.These are lyrics from the HOKEY POKEY, but can also be applied to 33-Across — SCARY CLOWN summarizes the plot of Stephen King’s “It.” And above that, COMPUTER SYSTEMS (20A) are what I.T., short for information technology, is all about.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

Nate Cardin must think he has put one over on us.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — If you grew up north of the U.S. border in the 1980s or ’90s, you might have become acquainted with a Canadian children’s music trio known as Sharon, Lois & Bram. Their music was lighthearted, interactive and absurd — one song, for example, was a jazzy ode to peanut butter and jelly (and a well-deserved one — it’s a timeless sandwich).Today’s crossword, constructed by Nate Cardin, brought to mind a particular song from the trio’s discography. What a treat to remember it, after all these years! I’ll share it after explaining today’s theme, to avert any spoilers.Shall we get our solving engines humming?Today’s ThemeYou may call me a woman of simple pleasures — and I’m not even sure if that’s an insult, really — but I found it just delightful that there was nothing more to this grid than a series of simple rhymes.The first of these rhyming words is at 18-Across, for a “‘Toy Story’ dachshund with a springy body”: SLINKY DOG. One row below it, at 20-Across: “This emoticon: ;-)” is a WINKY FACE. So that’s SLINKY, WINKY — and heck, let’s keep it going. STINKY TOFU (35A), “KINKY BOOTS” (40A) — you get it now. I’ll leave the discovery of the last two rhyming words to your inky pens. And as promised, I’ve included a rhyming addendum by Sharon, Lois & Bram above.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