this is the thread where we complain about the new york times crossword puzzle

the circles were "crossings", as in down-clue crossing the across-clue (or vice versa, I forget).

"columbus" was the first of those that i got, and i was all like "aha! columbus circle!" but no. i liked that. but then the circles proved to mean 0. i even took the circled letters and tried to anagramatize them, but they make nothing.

i obv thought "tee" at first, but then that makes the clue that goes through it "Big Eest" .. "Big East", surely?

WTF, Shortz?

Am I the only one who's a bit skeptical about this?

SLAWS may be the funniest word.

The Nintendo DS NTY Xword game is pretty sweet bcz you can have a friend (w/no cartridge even!) share a game & you solve the crossword together, each collaborating on yr own DS's screen. So much better than trying to arm in over each others' arms and omelettes and coffee while mutually solving.

Some of my favorite times have been tackling the xword with friends at a diner.

that "slaws" clue STILL has the power to bother me. more than three years later

i finally had coleslaw on a burger, yesterday - it was great - but no matter how many bowls of different peoples' coleslaw was out there, it would all just be "slaw"

the plural of "slaw", in other words, is "slaw"

Not if you had multiple kinds of slaw.

Hurting otm

No, different kinds of slaw results in "slaw", you can trust me on this

slawz

slols

slaws are made 2 be broken

fwiw tracer i have been trying to figure out what they mustve actually meant myself for like 5 minutes now

If you were at a slaw tasting, you would be asked "Which of the slaws do you like best?" not "Which of the SLAW do you like best?"

"which slaw do you like the best"

he is correct imo

BTW, did you know that "coleslaw" literally means "curly slave" in German?

if i was at a slaw tasting i'd look out over the long rows of tables, all laden with heaped platters of vinegary cabbage, and say softly to myself in awe, "that's a lot of slaw"

xpost: no, that is fantastic

no, I made that up

'Ah done reckon I'm hanckerin' for a slaw somrgasbord yee haw rootin' tootin' frick frackin' slinga-ling-dongin' hogwarshed guldurned rabbit!"

*shoots air; ground*

Hurting 2 why you braek hart

"If ain't ate all them type'a slaw, I'ma bury myself alive in a goldigger's grave, by great saint scott peter's ghost I tell ya all my ratta-tattin-fracka-lackin'-grabba-grubbin' cowlicked brown-eyed days!"

"Rabbit!"

alan braxe should be in more crosswords

It does kind of sound like it should mean that. But it derives from a word for cabbage, apparently.

diamanda galas

haha the wire needs to start a crossword puzzle on the back page!!

"Rocker Galas"

Eno, Bowie and Cale all seem like good crossword names

the wire crossword puzzle hints and answers

This goes COMPLETELY against the spirit of this thread, but ...

... am I the only person here who both did the NYT crossword and watched the Simpsons yesterday??? That seriously tripped me out!

wha happen???

I'm really glad I didn't see any news of this before it happened, because I was actually sitting on the couch doing the Sunday crossword while watching the Simpsons:

Lisa gets into crossword puzzles and enters a competition. Homer makes a bundle betting on her but then bets against her in the final competition, which she loses to Gil. Lisa finds out Homer bet against her and is outraged.

But then in the end Homer apologizes through the NYT crossword puzzle, the one I'm sitting there working on, which turns out to have not only a diagonal message (something like "DADDY SORRY FOR DUMB BET") but also the first letters of all the clues spell out a long message from Homer to Lisa!

Will Shortz was on the Simpsons

and Burns and Smithers "appeared" on the puzzle segment on Sunday Weekend Edition on NPR

ha! :)

I'm not in the habit of doing the Sunday NYT, since I only sporadically buy the paper, but there was buzz about this week's on the Cruciverb listserv because of the Simpsons tie-in, so I subscribed online last night. I watched the show first, though, so I had some freebie fills.

I had zero idea it was going to happen. It was a little bit scary, actually. Like "did I eat mushrooms and forget about it" scary.

(Although I had been thinking earlier in the episode that there were a whole lot of puzzles appearing, and obviously the artists weren't going to construct puzzles for background art, so surely they had some kind of partnership going with someone to use their puzzles...)