Games

Erik Agard extends his regards.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — You may come across the odd entry in the New York Times Crossword (or any crossword, for that matter) that doesn’t seem to be a real word. That’s valid! While we don’t need to argue over whether specific words do or don’t “exist” — in certain scholarly arguments, none of them do — it’s reasonable to wonder why some words appear in the crossword but not in the dictionary.With that said, I hope you’ll understand why Erik Agard decided to include 66-Across in today’s crossword. I think you’ll understand why the word had to be used … even if it is a bit of a stretch.Today’s ThemeThere’s no revealer in this theme, but it does feel as though each themed entry builds on the previous one as you move down the grid. Four identical clues at 17-, 36-, 44- and 66-Across read: [“Seriously?!”]. The answers are distinct, albeit tonally similar, but one of them stands out.I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU (17A) leads to WHO DOES THAT? (36A) and THE AUDACITY! (44A). Then it’s just WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW (66A).The joke dawned on me when I noticed that I had some kind of grid-spanning entry that ended in -OOW. What kind of expression of disbelief was this? I filled the row with O’s, half-joking at the notion. Only once several Down entries crossed the O’s successfully did I realize what was going on. “Ooooooooooohhhh,” you might say.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

Kate Hawkins and Erica Hsiung Wojcik make their collaboration debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Before we begin our weeks and dig into the day’s puzzle, I’d like us all to pause for a moment of communal self-care. Please join me in gazing at this column’s header image of wild piglets sleeping in a stripy little pile and feel its curative effects wash over you.If that seems like too saccharine a sentiment, consider it compensation for the biting wit in today’s crossword theme, which Kate Hawkins and Erica Hsiung Wojcik have woven into an otherwise guileless and beginner-friendly puzzle. Don’t feel guilty for enjoying the acerbic tone therein — we can have a little snark, as a treat.Today’s ThemeA sarcastic phrase akin to [“Uh-huh, I bet”] is YEAH, RIGHT. The circled letters in 17-, 24-, 36- and 50-Across reveal what this phrase describes, in a literal sense: words synonymous with “yeah” hidden in the right side of their entries.The [Memento-filled craft project] at 17-Across is a SCRAPBOOK, with OK at the end. At 24-Across, the [Fast-food chain that serves Louisiana chicken] is POPEYES, which ends with YES. And so on and so forth.I appreciate a cute and uncomplicated theme like this one to start my week. It elicited a chuckle, which is all we can hope for sometimes.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

Sarah Sinclair wishes all of us, coupled or single, a happy Valentine’s Day.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Whenever I see Sarah Sinclair’s byline, I know we’re about to see something really entertaining. And I don’t just mean her crosswords, although those are great. Ms. Sinclair has developed a fun habit of sending theme-adjacent photos of herself and her collaborators to Wordplay, which I consider to be a kind of dessert after solving the puzzle.Today’s confection is a video of her barbershop quartet (below her notes) wishing us a happy Valentine’s Day, and I think it’s the perfect end to a lovely solving experience.Tricky CluesToday’s puzzle is a themeless one, but there is quite a bit of good thematic material here, highlighted by the central entry, CATCH FEELINGS, at 36A.14A. [Clean energy?] has minimal or no impact on the environment, but in this puzzle the clue refers to what some believe to be vital life energy. If yours is clean, you have probably racked up some GOOD KARMA in your lifetime.18A. Get your minds out of the gutter, please. These [Bad things to blow] are FUSES.22A. Let’s play our favorite crossword game that doesn’t actually exist: “Is It a Verb or a Noun?” When it’s a noun, a [Parcel] is a package, but the word can also be used as a verb to mean to METE out something.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

Don’t throw away this chance to solve Jem Burch’s puzzle.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — This is Jem Burch’s seventh crossword in The New York Times, and I am quickly becoming a fan (or 53D) of his work. Most of his past puzzles have been on Thursdays and Fridays, the days when I write the Wordplay column, so I’ve gotten to know his work pretty well.Mr. Burch has a knack for including rich nonthematic fill, and is good at writing entertaining clues for even the most ubiquitous entries. Have a look at the clue/answer pair at 48D, for example. It got a laugh out of me.Well done, Mr. Burch. I’m looking forward to your next puzzle.Today’s ThemeBrass yourself for impact: We are looking for metals hidden in the entries that we’ll need to remove in order to discover the real answer to the theme clues. Mr. Burch’s theme is not difficult, but you should alloy yourself to zinc outside the box.Please don’t let me steel the show, though. Join in the fun and leave your metal puns in the comments. Rust me, there are a lot of them.Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system:I knew something was up when I figured out that the answer to [Emerge, as teeth] at 17A was GROWING OLD. That made no sense, so I used my award-winning*, patented** “stare at the grid until the answer makes sense” process to figure it out. If you remove GOLD, what’s left of the answer is GROW IN, which matches the clue.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

Extra, extra fun awaits you in Philip Koski’s crossword.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Do you ever feel as though a crossword puzzle is speaking directly to you? That was my experience while solving today’s puzzle, constructed by Philip Koski. Some of it is just too relatable: I can’t be the only one, for instance, who winced in recognition at 65-Across. But the theme itself struck me as uncannily tailored to my interests, and I expect that anyone who works in media or journalism will feel similarly spoken to.This is an especially chewy Wednesday otherwise, with ample room for barely noticeable mistakes (some of which I made and have reviewed for your convenience in the Tricky Clues section below). Shall we read it and weep together?Today’s ThemeYou’ve no doubt found out [where some journalism is located] (60A/63A) through your own online reading habits: BEHIND A PAYWALL. This phrase also reveals a key to interpreting the ends of 20-, 30- and 44-Across in relation to the shaded squares.First, let’s review the entries in question: [The] is a DEFINITE ARTICLE (20A) — or the definite article, as it’s the only one we have in English. It is not to be confused with “the genuine article,” which is just a nice thing to say. But I digress: One who [Talks frankly] (30A) SPEAKS ONE’S PIECE, and [Success against all odds] is known as a CINDERELLA STORY (44A).The shaded squares, once filled, spell WAGE and SALARY. And they represent a literal wall of pay-related words, behind which we find ARTICLE, PIECE and STORY — i.e., news items. You might have also seen Mr. Koski’s extra wink at 26A with [Cover story?], which refers not to front-page news but to a FIB.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

Paul Coulter conducts an experiment.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — One of my goals for this year is to construct a crossword puzzle. I’m aware that most elements of puzzle making can be learned by rote, but it worries me that there’s no study guide for imagination. Judging by the creativity and originality of the puzzles that come across my desk each week — including today’s crossword, constructed by Paul Coulter — I’m in need of a crash course.Mr. Coulter’s grid plays with a language pattern so subtle that I would never have thought to point it out, and uncovering that code was tremendously satisfying. If you haven’t cracked it yet, I hope that the body of this column illuminates things for you.Today’s ThemeThe revealer at 35-Across reads as follows: [Like some harmony … or a hint to 17-, 30-, 47- and 59-Across]. The answer is TWO-PART — music theory heads rise up — and refers to the fact that each of today’s themed entries is made up of two body parts.The [Emoji that means “I’m crazy about you!”] (17A) is the HEART EYES emoji, as in heart plus eyes. Another word for a [Harmonica] (30A) is a MOUTH ORGAN, made of mouth and organ (technically a wider category that includes the heart, but I’ll allow it).Incidentally, the harmonica featured prominently in two movies I watched recently, one old and one new: It was a central plot point in “Once Upon a Time in the West” and appeared with Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown,” the recent Bob Dylan biopic. Who knew an instrument could be so, uh, instrumental?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

Kelly Morenus opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — This is Kelly Morenus’s second puzzle in The New York Times (with more to come!), and it’s high time we got to know her.Ms. Morenus is a middle school social studies teacher on Long Island who conducts her classes in Spanish as part of an immersion program. When she’s not making puzzles, she likes to read, binge Britbox shows, sew, travel (often solo) and hang out with her two dogs, Eli and Lucy.“I love the challenge of making a puzzle with fun entries and clean fill,” Ms. Morenus said in an email. “I’d love to craft a themed puzzle, but, alas, all of my themes have been rejected so far. Hopefully one of these days I will land on a worthy theme!“I’m also looking forward to attending the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament for the first time this year,” she continued. “I don’t consider myself a speedy solver, but I think it will be fun to attend and meet other puzzle people. If you’re there, I’d love to say hello!”It’s interesting to note that her grid design is nearly identical to the layout she used last time. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Some constructors find certain grid designs easier to fill than others, and the ones Ms. Morenus chose are amusing to look at and to solve. They have room for those long, luxurious stair-step entries at the top and the bottom, as well as the fun diagonal slide to the center of the grid.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

Kathy Lowden makes a few changes.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — When the cold weather first sets in, which often happens right around this time of year in New York City, the gloomy, chilly days that sweep through can bring about the winter blues. On days like those, I am especially grateful for the reliably sunny experience of solving a crossword. You can have your SAD lamp; it’s word puzzles for me (and possibly for some of you, too).It’s particularly delightful amid such melancholy to encounter a puzzle constructed by Kathy Lowden, because she is an utter whiz at whimsical themes. On Halloween last year, she collaborated with Erik Piepenburg, a writer and horror columnist, to pull off the perfect fright of a puzzle, in which movie titles combined to form a scary story. This October, she brought us a series of witty rhymes for groups of various people and things: dozens of cousins, oodles of poodles and so on. Today’s theme uses wordplay of another kind, but retains Ms. Lowden’s signature winking style of humor. Let’s smile on it together, shall we?Today’s ThemeThere are technically only two terms in today’s themed entries, but their cleverness is in triplicate. A [Snide comment about a collectible figurine?], for instance, is a KNICKKNACK KNOCK (17A). A [Kerfuffle over beach footwear?] would be a FLIP-FLOP FLAP (26A). If you’re experiencing a [Feeling of guilt after cheating at table tennis?], it might be referred to as a PINGPONG PANG (48A). And [Singer Parton when she’s aimlessly wasting time?] is DILLYDALLY DOLLY (63A).Only the vowels change from syllable to syllable, and the effect is just wondrous. It reminded me of a tongue-twister that we used in my college acting classes to warm up our voices, though that had decidedly darker instances of alliteration than those used in today’s grid:To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dockIn a pestilential prison with a lifelong lockAwaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shockFrom a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.Tricky Clues33A. As someone without a putting bone in her body, I don’t quite relate to the idea that GOLF is [“a good walk spoiled,” per Mark Twain]. The implication, as I understand it, is that an otherwise pleasant walk through green fields is rendered monotonous when it’s just for a round of golf. To my mind, the quote makes more sense if the “good walk” being spoiled is that of a non-golfer’s when hit in the head by a stray ball.40A/7D. If you discover two identical clues in a puzzle — in this grid, it’s [“Scram!”] — you’ve stumbled onto what we call twin clues. Be careful, though: While the hints may have similar meanings, their entries are never “twins.” At 40A, [“Scram!”] solves to GIT! At 7D, the same clue solves to SCAT!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