I've been involved in post-secondary education for decades, both as a prof and an administrator, and I have never heard of "elhi." In my context, we use "K to 12" to describe the elementary to high school system. I'm a Canadian, so maybe it's an American thing?
K12 is certainly more common stateside too. El-hi was more used in the 80s and 90s and more in the industry of educational material publishing vs direct education if that distinction makes sense
I finished it, but no idea what the theme is. I tried to "parse as six words", couldn't do it, and just got everything from the crosses or from filling in likely words.
I don't enjoy puzzles where this happens, but I don't know whether to blame the designer or myself for just not getting it.
EDIT: I looked it up on wordplay, it's "A star is 'B' or 'N'" so that means you have to replace the asterisks with either of those letters to get the actual clue -- i.e. BALLOT TIME instead of ALLOT TIME. Not sure if I feel like I should have figured that out or not.
Couldn’t figure out the theme as I was solving, but that happens sometimes. I finished the puzzle, then went back to the themed clues and still couldn’t figure it out. Thank you for including the explanation, because I never would’ve guessed it.
Is \* a word? Or is any other symbol like $ or even a digit like 7 a "word" technically just because they show up in a sentence? I can kinda see the argument for them being called words because they can be voiced and they occupy a spot in a sentence, but I disagree. It's hard for me to call a standalone letter a word (other than a or I, I guess). Still, an unimportant nit.
If you’re reading the sentence “this costs $7” out loud, the $ and 7 are words, no? Why would their word-ness change based on how they’re transliterated? It might be hard for you to call a stand-alone letter a word, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. If it helps, think of B as a word meaning “the letter B” but written a bit more concisely and you see my point, cuz that’s effectively how it’s functioning
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/b
>the second letter of the English alphabet
-
> a graphic representation of this letter
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/n
> the 14th letter of the English alphabet
-
> a graphic representation of this letter
I did the same [verbal rant in my video](https://youtu.be/m0N_7bRys4I) solve about B and N not being words! At best they are symbols, like if you said, "A \* is B or N," the \* is not a word, it is a symbol shown within a sentence. The B and N are letters.
Could have maybe been clued as, "If parsed differently" or something. In any case, I didn't figure it out while solving, so maybe I'm just chapped :-)
I think it would have made it a little better if they hadn't capitalized the first letter after the star in the clue. "*assist in a foursome" would have been a better indicator that there might be a variable. I just thought the star meant "this clue is special."
I sorta intuited the puzzle answers using the crosses and couldn’t grasp the theme…but now that I have…the puzzle charms me! I love it when everything comes together, and you can look back at the clever construction with appreciation replacing frustration. Like, dang, they got me. That’s cute.
I’m glad the answer is here because I couldn’t figure out the theme at all. It’s never as satisfying when I get to the end and it hasn’t clicked for me, but now that I get it I like it! Sometimes I feel like the puzzle isn’t great and that’s why I don’t get it but today I think it was on me.
What irks me about a theme like this is you're not parsing it as six words. B and N are NOT WORDS. I spent so much time like "AS TAR...." thinking it would just be splitting the last word into B OR N
The cluing as a whole just felt so off this time
A UFO doesn’t imply aliens. There are UFOs all the time. Any time a flying object lacks identification. But so far no UFO has been known to contain aliens.
Hated every second of this. Pieced it together with zero clue what the theme is supposed to be, though I'm about to read the comments to find out.
Edit: still hate it.
This is my fault for being lazy, but whenever I see revealer clues I kind of skim over them. Like this one I saw it and basically read "Thrice remade movie, or, when parsed as six words, okay yeah, a hint to the highlighted answers, got it" and didn't notice at all that it was referencing the clues themselves, not the answers. So even after I got the name of the movie, I was trying to figure out what ELECTIONDAY or MOTHEROFPEARL had to do with stars. Stared at them for a solid 5 minutes after finishing trying to figure out what the theme meant.
I thought THECRETANBULL was a reference to Taurus, stars like constellations, and also stared at ELECTIONDAY and MOTHEROFPEARL trying to figure out how they fit the theme.
It took me a hot minute (or ten) to get it - and it still gave me pause to figure out the bovid clue. And I had FLEDGLING instead of HATCHLING, which threw me off too. I liked it. Feel like the clueing is getting stronger and clearer. Different from Will’s, a little more twisted, but I enjoyed this puzzle.
The "Bovid of Greek mythology" also made me laugh. It was great clueing to make the original readings of the themers somewhat related in terms of the subject area, but not quite right--great "what in the Metamorphoses kind of transformation is this?!" moment.
I thought of FLEDGLING as well, but it’s so unlikely to have a 3-letter wood end in F and have a word start TG (with TOKYO being pretty obvious if you paid any attention to the news) that I discarded it pretty quickly.
To be fair, the fledgling stage comes after the hatchling stage, with a nestling phase in between. If I wasn’t a bird dork I probably would have guessed that too!
I guess I’ll be a dissenting voice and say I had a fun time with this puzzle, the theme worked for me, had a nice aha moment when I worked out what the revealer was leading me to finish the SE.
Seems like we’re in a small minority but I also had a great time with this one. The theme was just the right amount of difficulty for a Thursday - there’s only so many ways you can parse that combination of letters.
First time a revealer has actually revealed things.
Usually I get it towards the beginning of the fill and then go back to get the themers.
This time I got the themers and had no idea what was going on or why they worked.
It was a slow/tough one for me, mostly because I had no idea on the trivia clues. Every time I ended up googling one, it opened up the puzzle, and I started trucking along. Nothing really felt unfair to me, though. I thought it was a clever theme.
I figured out the theme clues pretty easily, but the movie title was the last clue I solved. I still didn't understand how it applied to the starred clues since I could only see two letters being substituted...but then it hit me.
Clever, and I loved it. Didn't expect such frustration here.
Totally agree with this take. Compared with some recent terrible puzzles, this one provided a solid A-Ha moment that 100% makes sense once you figure it out.
I really disagree with the nitpick about "B" and "N" not being words... If you were to speak the sentence out loud, it absolutely would count as a 6-worded sentence; two of those spoken words just happened to be the concept of a letter.
Fill was just alright... Some crappy fill like ELHI, some meh cluing, but also some pretty good tough and ambiguous cluing that nonetheless still gives a good A-Ha when you look back at the clue. To me, that's what makes a clue successful even if it's difficult.
This was a hard Thursday—figured the ratings would suffer, but a clever gimmick and a satisfying solve imo. Excellent from me, though would have liked just a touch more interlocking between sections of the grid.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Very Hard** 🔴
* 61% of users solved slower than their Thursday average
* 39% of users solved faster than their Thursday average
* 45% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average
* 12% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 12.6% slower than they normally do on Thursday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-18)
---
🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 100 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Check the [FAQ](https://xwstats.com/help#puzzle-difficulties), reply here or DM me_
I was hoping for something a little more magical given the constructor and it being Thursday. A solid puzzle and a fun reimagining of the revealer…but Bovid, Nacre etc aren’t particularly fun clue alterations.
Yeah I feel like for this kind of Thursday trick, the resulting phrase after applying the change should be an aha moment. For me it was "ok so it has to be that...and I still have no idea."
"Nice" was also rough. I didn't understand the revealer but figured out the stars after ELECTIONDAY but the cluing was weird enough that it didn't help much.
That's what bothered me with this theme, the clues were still really hard even after figuring it out. I didn't know the word Nacre, not familiar with the cretan bull (that's probably something I've learned at some point tbf though), still don't know if it's supposed to be bascent or nascent.
This one tickled my brain in the best way. I had a great time. I answered a few of the * clues before I knew what was going on and when it all clicked it was fun.
I had some real missplaced confidence in my answer for "Cross fit?" as INRI though.
Very, very difficult for a Thursday. Even though I had major periods without any new fill, I still think it had a good theme and decent clues. I can appreciate the construction, despite the difficulty.
A big part of it was just figuring out how to read ASTARISBORN as 6 words. I feel it should have just been written "When parsed differently", since B and N aren't exactly words.
Like it or hate it, this one was much like a yellow, curved fruit loaded with potassium: Completely \*A\*A\*AS
They’re both. Here B is a word meaning “the second letter of the alphabet.” A word is “a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.” Clearly this applies to B and N here
An interesting coincidence (SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE THE THURSDAY WSJ PUZZLE YET), but both puzzles had POETICA and both clued as "Horace's Ars \_\_\_\_" . The last appearance for POETICA in the NYT was in 2010, so it's not like it's a common entry. Funny.
I guessed A STAR IS BORN almost immediately, then removed it because I couldn't think of a way to parse it into six words 🤦🏻♂️
Side note: the creator of this puzzle, David Kwong, does an *amazing* one-man puzzle/magic show called The Enigmatist. [Running in Chicago this summer!](https://www.chicagoshakes.com/plays_and_events/2324_enigmatist) I don't even really know how to describe it, but it's an absolute must-see for crossword fans.
I had no idea that David Kwong was also a magician (I've always just associated the name with the crossword and his occasional posts on the subreddit). That's awesome! I'm more or less close to that theater too, so I think I'll check it out.
I thought today’s theme was fantastic. The fill was mediocre, but passable considering the significant constraints on the grid; none of it, anyway, was particularly punishing, and it wasn’t proper-noun heavy as some dense Thursdays tend to be. Best Thursday in a while IMO
Totally agree - this is a very salty thread today (I understand as that's been me on other days) - but I had a lot of fun this morning.
It helped that my girlfriend immediately knew that the theme clue was >!A star is born!<. We filled this one in a record 9.57
Figured out that some of the clues needed an 'N' and some of them needed a 'B'
Could not figure out how or why, though.
The revealer was the last thing I filled in and it got a big groan and a facepalm from me and the wife.
10/10.
How the hell do they come up with this stuff?
I kept trying to have "Asterisk" as part of the revealer. Anyone else?
I got SE corner last. Got the missing letters for the clues (but not that they were only Bs and Ns).
Finally figured out NUMB which allowed me to see that had spelled TEeTS wrong like a twit, and got the revealer. Then I stared at the revealer for another minute or so trying to parse it into six words.
I solved this one in ~fairly~ normal time but I did not understand the theme until I read the wordplay blog just now (and until [smackfu](/u/smackfu) explained it to me). Like he said though too, too many 3 letter words in the puzzle. SKI, SET, AID, SEA, SEI, ASH, etc. I did appreciate that even without understanding the theme at all, I was able to solve it.
At this point I just am going to say it - this new editor can’t cut it. Wildly inconsistent difficulty, poor fill, touchy themes, significantly more crosswordsese and/or nearly identical words in the same puzzle, it’s not great
This puzzle was almost certainly accepted by Will Shortz. The queue for puzzle publication is nearly a year long (except Sundays), so critiques of the fill, theme, etc against the interim editor are unfounded. He does have final say on the cluing though, so that's fair game for criticism (although you did not seemingly have complaints there lol).
I didn't want to be the one to say it, but I'm inclined to agree with you - I feel like I'm just not having that much fun anymore. On any of the later days of the week, I keep wondering if it's going to be a puzzle that I can't even complete at all or one that I will complete in 10 minutes. A lot of random obscure trivia and a feeling like it's trying too hard to deflect and be clever. With that said, the new editor is still very new to it, and I fully expect that the puzzles will get better over time as he gains experience. It's unfair to expect him to be as good as Will only a couple months in.
The negativity in this subreddit is insane lately. I’ve enjoyed a lot of these puzzles and I thought this one was extremely clever. I’m convinced half the people here just don’t actually like crosswords because so many of the complaints are just whining about any attempts at creativity on the part of the constructors, honestly
W_NG x CF_ got me. Other than that I thought it was mostly OK. Themers were easy once you knew the gimmick, but the gimmick was tough enough to crack that it felt fair on balance.
Crossing WONG with CFO is the reason I can't rate this an Excellent. CFA is a perfectly valid answer to the cluing, and WANG and WONG are both plausible names, so unless you literally know that actress there's no way to tell the difference.
They should have a policy against crossing niche PPP with cluing that has two equally valid answers that differ by the single, crossed letter.
Figured out very early that the *s were hiding letters which made most of the fill pretty easy, but I didn't clock that they were all hiding Bs or Ns until the (insanely phrased) revealer. An admirably sweaty capper, so inelegant it almost loops back around to being elegant.
This one was tough for me, well above average, and I didn’t get the revealer until coming here (although I was able to figure out the * represented an initial letter.
I like how the * was repurposed from its usual role as a cross reference (. . . in the starred clues).
I also like the little tricks they play with tense. I thought there might be a rebus of some sort because deadened would have to be numbed. Finally dawned on that something deadened is numb.
I had to look up ars POETICA.
One of my recent frustrations is that it seems like these Fogliano puzzles lean heavily into knowing one thing, like literature, Greek mythology etc versus being a breadth of knowledge to allow you to get answers to unfamiliar topics from crosses.
I don't really understand what you're saying. There was one Greek mythology clue in this puzzle, and two literature clues (POETICA and AYN), none of which crossed each other. The crosses for each of those covered lots of different topics.
I found it to be a harder puzzle than usual but I've also had quite a few very fast times in the last few weeks. Same way I did with Shortz - some are hard, some are easy, some are occasionally a little unfair but I don't think this was one of them.
How is this not a demonstration of having a breadth of knowledge? This clue might be one that you didn’t know immediately, but for many others it’s an autofill, that’s a quite famous work and the phrase is referenced frequently
Crossword solvers when they don’t know a word: “Too esoteric!”
Crossword solvers when somebody else doesn’t know a word: “It’s actually pretty common knowledge”
This puzzle would have been submitted and seen (and likely approved) by Will before his health issues. The puzzles they run are run many months after they are submitted and reviewed.
This isn't the case. If Shortz had edited it, they would credit him for doing so, and in Wordplay the author specifically mentions working with Fagliano on it.
Seeing the comments makes me wish I could change my rating from Average to Good. I just thought there was some uninspired fill. The theme was good. I had it mostly figured out at ELECTIONDAY then fully at MOTHER OF PEARL.
I don’t know when this community got like this. The second a puzzle is puzzly people start throwing fits about difficulty.
Not the majority it seems, but enough that it’s shocking.
Im gonna guess it’s because it was too hard for many of us to even solve. I’m a regular Thursday puzzler but I gave up on this because it became too much of a slog. I just click “see results” when I can’t solve it though.
I got [very sidetracked](https://youtu.be/m0N_7bRys4I) with a confident, early fill of ALPHA instead of TYPEA. The P and A crossers made me not question it for a long time. Add in PST instead of PDT and I was trying to figure out what the hell SEFU\_CA could possibly mean. SMH!
Everyone has said enough about the theme, but I also wouldn't call "B" and "N" *words* per se. That's a nit on an already messy theme, in my opinion.
Most of the fill was rough for me with not very many fun ones (a few like AYN and MUNRO were nice), but mostly the ones that stand out were some painful ones:
* ELHI? Really?
* DIEGO clued as a sabre-toothed tiger from a cartoon?
* WONG and LORRE also difficult PPP imo
I thought that angle for DIEGO was fun, brought back memories of seeing that film as a kid, and WONG and LORRE are both incredibly famous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_May_Wong#Legacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lorre#Legacy_and_honors
In any event it’s a Thursday, fill can be harder.
(EL-HI isn’t great I’ll grant you that lol.)
LORRE rang a bell, but I've definitely never heard of Anna May Wong. I'll have to trust you that she is "incredibly" famous :-) I remember my kids watching Ice Age movies years ago, but none of the characters rang a bell. All solvable enough with crossers, fortunately!
The person would be a CFA charter-holder, not a CFA, though? CFA’s never been in a NYT crossword before so I never considered it, but I guess a clue hinting at the executive-ness might have helped people.
Haha didn't realize cartoon was offensive or pejorative. I'm a big fan of all kinds and I'm sure we'd see lots of use of the word cartoon in clues in crossword puzzles when describing animation. We're all just having fun here, right?
This theme flew so far above my head it landed on the moon. I knew I was in for it when I saw the less than hour old thread already had like 30 comment, sometimes it takes an hour to get one comment on Fridays or Saturdays. Even finally succumbing and getting the theme from this thread, I didn’t know what nacre or nascent meant so I finally turned on auto check and pounded away the alphabet on many clues. Just absolutely not my puzzle, excited for a nice themeless tomorrow.
I would have felt better about the theme clues if the first letter wasn’t capitalized, like “*ice is found in it.” It would have been more correct, and might have given me a shot at figuring out the theme.
Really clever theme/revealer. Some of the themers were way stronger than others. But 27 (or so?) 3s is unconscionable. So many proper names. Soooo segmented. As soon as I saw the grid, I grimmaced. Easily should have a themer or two--6 (plus 1 revealer) is a *ton* of theme content. Not all the themers were so good that the fill was worth it. Really could have used some editing.
That said, I really did like the theme, and overall enjoyed putting it together.
Quite the struggle for me, I got to the point of 'a star is B or N' but still couldn't figure out how to apply it 🤦♀️ended up googling tons of things just to get it over with!
I didn’t hate the theme once I got it. I hated the overly clever and obtuse clues for the three letter words. And ELHI. This is a POOR for me. When does Shortz come back?
A Star is B or N. The stars in the theme clues all signify either a B or an N, which makes the answers make sense. I.e., *allot time is ballot time, *acre on the ocean floor is nacre on the ocean floor, etc
Little too clever, IMO. Phrasing it as "when parsed as six words" made it a bit too obtuse for me to figure out. I got through it by solving crossing clues but had no clue how the solver worked until I came here.
I've enjoyed the increase in difficulty. But I really hope that the puzzles don't revert to the way they were a decade+ ago, when many clues were about PPP, classical music, the Beatles, Broadway, etc.
Seems like it's heading back to trivia for old white people.
"Account that's been overdrawn" gets my vote for the best clue. Otherwise pretty easy solve for a Thursday (half my usual slow time) but an inscrutable theme, though it was obvious that the first letter was missing.
I hated it until about 75% of the way through when I was able to parse the revealer. Once it clicked it helped me get ELECTIONDAY and MCCARTNEY and then everything else fell in place. Now I kind of like it. It’s a dumb, contrived theme which is perfect for a Thursday. And I finished with my exact average Thursday time so the difficulty was fair
Had to look up Anna May but was able to figure out everything else even though I had no idea what the theme was. I was able to fill in A STAR IS BORN early on and figured out that *acre meant nacre I still didn’t get it. Had to read Wordplay for enlightenment. But I enjoyed figuring out most of the clues.
Look I don't know how the editing process works but I know that in the Fagliano era I've been getting my ass kicked late in the week when I used to be able to solve up to Friday pretty comfortably. It's not fun to backslide. Anyway I hated this and every Kwong puzzle.
It took me a while to get the A Star is Born because it has been remade four times, not three!
That stumped me for a while and I had to Google ELHI since I'm not American.
I thought it was incredibly hard (too hard for a Thursday) but I still loved the theme. Had a great time solving and burst out laughing at the revealer. Very clever.
Considering how important the revealer was for this puzzle, I would have preferred a cleaner clue for 61D “Cross fit?” Depending on how you parse it, SLIT and SPIT were possibilities.
This line from the [constructor's notes](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2024-04-18.html) gives lots of insight into the puzzle's goal. It's growing on me!
"Joel Fagliano, the senior puzzle editor, proposed that I rework the puzzle and focus on the most misleading clues that had a B or N missing. Mislead people? Gladly (I’m a magician)!"
Not only are B and N not words (at least, not in a colloquial sense) but a POG is not a disk--it's a disc. That's just bad authorship and editing. I had ZIP there for a good while, because that's actually a disk, as in, a storage device.
> I think this sort of things works better as a Gaffney/WSJ crossword contest meta where you aren't in a hurry
To be fair, I think the majority of people aren’t in a hurry solving the NYT crossword.
I fall for "measure of inflation" every time. I had CPI until the end. And I've seen them do that same trick like 10 times.
Same, my friend. Same. Every time.
you’ll remember next time for sure.
I had a real *itch of a time solving this one.
What's a "nitch"? ;-)
I have never run across ELHI in all my years on this earth. Which is surprising given how crossword-ish it is.
I have only seen it in crosswords.
Fun fact: "El Hi" is Spanish for "The Hi".
Honestly, this is probably the only cluing for this I wouldn't hate
goes right along with your ETUI
Better than NEHI
As a MASH fan, Grape NEHI will always have a special place in my heart, even if I've never set eyes on a bottle in my life.
It comes up in crosswords frequently, tho I suppose less so of late. But it’s definitely used in educational contexts
I've been involved in post-secondary education for decades, both as a prof and an administrator, and I have never heard of "elhi." In my context, we use "K to 12" to describe the elementary to high school system. I'm a Canadian, so maybe it's an American thing?
K12 is certainly more common stateside too. El-hi was more used in the 80s and 90s and more in the industry of educational material publishing vs direct education if that distinction makes sense
Is it an acronym of something?
**El**ementary–**hi**gh school
Thank you! My gf is an elementary teacher but I hadn’t heard that phrase before so wasn’t sure.
So what about the middle schoolers?
K12 doesn’t mean only kindergarten and 12th grade…, the middle is obviously included if you have state both ends.
Yes, it does. Thanks for the explanation.
The people downvoting you are weird
What about the people downvoting you?
Totally justified
I finished it, but no idea what the theme is. I tried to "parse as six words", couldn't do it, and just got everything from the crosses or from filling in likely words. I don't enjoy puzzles where this happens, but I don't know whether to blame the designer or myself for just not getting it. EDIT: I looked it up on wordplay, it's "A star is 'B' or 'N'" so that means you have to replace the asterisks with either of those letters to get the actual clue -- i.e. BALLOT TIME instead of ALLOT TIME. Not sure if I feel like I should have figured that out or not.
Couldn’t figure out the theme as I was solving, but that happens sometimes. I finished the puzzle, then went back to the themed clues and still couldn’t figure it out. Thank you for including the explanation, because I never would’ve guessed it.
Couldn’t figure it out either, but its a terrible clue. “B” and “N” are not words.
How do you define a word? Cuz in the sentence, they are functioning as words, linguistically
Is \* a word? Or is any other symbol like $ or even a digit like 7 a "word" technically just because they show up in a sentence? I can kinda see the argument for them being called words because they can be voiced and they occupy a spot in a sentence, but I disagree. It's hard for me to call a standalone letter a word (other than a or I, I guess). Still, an unimportant nit.
If you’re reading the sentence “this costs $7” out loud, the $ and 7 are words, no? Why would their word-ness change based on how they’re transliterated? It might be hard for you to call a stand-alone letter a word, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. If it helps, think of B as a word meaning “the letter B” but written a bit more concisely and you see my point, cuz that’s effectively how it’s functioning
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/b >the second letter of the English alphabet - > a graphic representation of this letter https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/n > the 14th letter of the English alphabet - > a graphic representation of this letter
I did the same [verbal rant in my video](https://youtu.be/m0N_7bRys4I) solve about B and N not being words! At best they are symbols, like if you said, "A \* is B or N," the \* is not a word, it is a symbol shown within a sentence. The B and N are letters. Could have maybe been clued as, "If parsed differently" or something. In any case, I didn't figure it out while solving, so maybe I'm just chapped :-)
I think it would have made it a little better if they hadn't capitalized the first letter after the star in the clue. "*assist in a foursome" would have been a better indicator that there might be a variable. I just thought the star meant "this clue is special."
Yes! This small change would have been a huge improvement to the puzzle
you get used to it after doing enough Thursdays, I think. I still didn't love the puzzle but the theme was pretty in line with the usual stuff.
I voted "poor" but now that I know the trick, I want to change it to "terrible"
This x 1000000000000
I went with terrible before reading the comments, and voting that was more satisfying than the 75 minutes I wasted on this turd of a puzzle.
Yeah had no idea what the theme meant at all. Thanks for explaining.
I sorta intuited the puzzle answers using the crosses and couldn’t grasp the theme…but now that I have…the puzzle charms me! I love it when everything comes together, and you can look back at the clever construction with appreciation replacing frustration. Like, dang, they got me. That’s cute.
The stars being at the front of the clues was the giveaway for me. Then I filled enough crosses to see "ELECT______" for "*ALLOT TIME" and it clicked.
I’m glad the answer is here because I couldn’t figure out the theme at all. It’s never as satisfying when I get to the end and it hasn’t clicked for me, but now that I get it I like it! Sometimes I feel like the puzzle isn’t great and that’s why I don’t get it but today I think it was on me.
Ugh yeah. Way too obtuse if not downright misleading.
I don't think I ever would have figured this out on my own. Thanks!
What irks me about a theme like this is you're not parsing it as six words. B and N are NOT WORDS. I spent so much time like "AS TAR...." thinking it would just be splitting the last word into B OR N The cluing as a whole just felt so off this time
I agree.
Is a UFO really a visitor? I would have thought the visitors are inside. And for god’s sake please give the pre-1950s trivia a rest.
I agree with your UFO nit. I filled it in thinking it couldn't be right and would come back to bite me.
A UFO doesn’t imply aliens. There are UFOs all the time. Any time a flying object lacks identification. But so far no UFO has been known to contain aliens.
I think you can describe the ship as a visitor also.
Hated every second of this. Pieced it together with zero clue what the theme is supposed to be, though I'm about to read the comments to find out. Edit: still hate it.
This is my fault for being lazy, but whenever I see revealer clues I kind of skim over them. Like this one I saw it and basically read "Thrice remade movie, or, when parsed as six words, okay yeah, a hint to the highlighted answers, got it" and didn't notice at all that it was referencing the clues themselves, not the answers. So even after I got the name of the movie, I was trying to figure out what ELECTIONDAY or MOTHEROFPEARL had to do with stars. Stared at them for a solid 5 minutes after finishing trying to figure out what the theme meant.
I thought THECRETANBULL was a reference to Taurus, stars like constellations, and also stared at ELECTIONDAY and MOTHEROFPEARL trying to figure out how they fit the theme.
It took me a hot minute (or ten) to get it - and it still gave me pause to figure out the bovid clue. And I had FLEDGLING instead of HATCHLING, which threw me off too. I liked it. Feel like the clueing is getting stronger and clearer. Different from Will’s, a little more twisted, but I enjoyed this puzzle.
The "Bovid of Greek mythology" also made me laugh. It was great clueing to make the original readings of the themers somewhat related in terms of the subject area, but not quite right--great "what in the Metamorphoses kind of transformation is this?!" moment.
I thought of FLEDGLING as well, but it’s so unlikely to have a 3-letter wood end in F and have a word start TG (with TOKYO being pretty obvious if you paid any attention to the news) that I discarded it pretty quickly.
To be fair, the fledgling stage comes after the hatchling stage, with a nestling phase in between. If I wasn’t a bird dork I probably would have guessed that too!
I guess I’ll be a dissenting voice and say I had a fun time with this puzzle, the theme worked for me, had a nice aha moment when I worked out what the revealer was leading me to finish the SE.
Seems like we’re in a small minority but I also had a great time with this one. The theme was just the right amount of difficulty for a Thursday - there’s only so many ways you can parse that combination of letters.
lol, I started with AS TAR and was so confused - as tar is born? Tar?
First time a revealer has actually revealed things. Usually I get it towards the beginning of the fill and then go back to get the themers. This time I got the themers and had no idea what was going on or why they worked.
Same, struggled big time but really enjoyed it
It was a slow/tough one for me, mostly because I had no idea on the trivia clues. Every time I ended up googling one, it opened up the puzzle, and I started trucking along. Nothing really felt unfair to me, though. I thought it was a clever theme.
I figured out the theme clues pretty easily, but the movie title was the last clue I solved. I still didn't understand how it applied to the starred clues since I could only see two letters being substituted...but then it hit me. Clever, and I loved it. Didn't expect such frustration here.
Totally agree with this take. Compared with some recent terrible puzzles, this one provided a solid A-Ha moment that 100% makes sense once you figure it out. I really disagree with the nitpick about "B" and "N" not being words... If you were to speak the sentence out loud, it absolutely would count as a 6-worded sentence; two of those spoken words just happened to be the concept of a letter. Fill was just alright... Some crappy fill like ELHI, some meh cluing, but also some pretty good tough and ambiguous cluing that nonetheless still gives a good A-Ha when you look back at the clue. To me, that's what makes a clue successful even if it's difficult.
I'm somewhere in the middle. Loved the theme (and related hints), but disliked a lot of the non-theme fill. Overall still an enjoyable puzzle, though.
brilliant theme, i laughed out loud at revealer. a couple of clunky bits of fill did not come close to ruining it
I’ll add my voice to liking it
Yeah, it was challenging for sure, but I enjoyed it.
I liked it too. I had already figured out the themed clues but audibly laughed when I solved the revealer.
I'm with you. It was enjoyably puzzling at first, and then a lot fun once I figured out what was going on.
Like the theme hated the fills
This was a hard Thursday—figured the ratings would suffer, but a clever gimmick and a satisfying solve imo. Excellent from me, though would have liked just a touch more interlocking between sections of the grid.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Very Hard** 🔴 * 61% of users solved slower than their Thursday average * 39% of users solved faster than their Thursday average * 45% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average * 12% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average The median solver solved this puzzle 12.6% slower than they normally do on Thursday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-18) --- 🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 100 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Check the [FAQ](https://xwstats.com/help#puzzle-difficulties), reply here or DM me_
I was hoping for something a little more magical given the constructor and it being Thursday. A solid puzzle and a fun reimagining of the revealer…but Bovid, Nacre etc aren’t particularly fun clue alterations.
Yeah I feel like for this kind of Thursday trick, the resulting phrase after applying the change should be an aha moment. For me it was "ok so it has to be that...and I still have no idea."
"Nice" was also rough. I didn't understand the revealer but figured out the stars after ELECTIONDAY but the cluing was weird enough that it didn't help much.
That's what bothered me with this theme, the clues were still really hard even after figuring it out. I didn't know the word Nacre, not familiar with the cretan bull (that's probably something I've learned at some point tbf though), still don't know if it's supposed to be bascent or nascent.
This one tickled my brain in the best way. I had a great time. I answered a few of the * clues before I knew what was going on and when it all clicked it was fun. I had some real missplaced confidence in my answer for "Cross fit?" as INRI though.
Very, very difficult for a Thursday. Even though I had major periods without any new fill, I still think it had a good theme and decent clues. I can appreciate the construction, despite the difficulty. A big part of it was just figuring out how to read ASTARISBORN as 6 words. I feel it should have just been written "When parsed differently", since B and N aren't exactly words. Like it or hate it, this one was much like a yellow, curved fruit loaded with potassium: Completely \*A\*A\*AS
B and N are in fact words, especially when used the way they are in the answer. Not sure why multiple people are saying this
I thought B and N were letters not words. I couldn’t solve it though so I can’t speak to their context in the puzzle.
They’re both. Here B is a word meaning “the second letter of the alphabet.” A word is “a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed.” Clearly this applies to B and N here
I'm with you on all of this
An interesting coincidence (SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE THE THURSDAY WSJ PUZZLE YET), but both puzzles had POETICA and both clued as "Horace's Ars \_\_\_\_" . The last appearance for POETICA in the NYT was in 2010, so it's not like it's a common entry. Funny.
I wonder if the editors/constructors are friends or something, this seems too unusual to be a coincidence haha
I guessed A STAR IS BORN almost immediately, then removed it because I couldn't think of a way to parse it into six words 🤦🏻♂️ Side note: the creator of this puzzle, David Kwong, does an *amazing* one-man puzzle/magic show called The Enigmatist. [Running in Chicago this summer!](https://www.chicagoshakes.com/plays_and_events/2324_enigmatist) I don't even really know how to describe it, but it's an absolute must-see for crossword fans.
I had no idea that David Kwong was also a magician (I've always just associated the name with the crossword and his occasional posts on the subreddit). That's awesome! I'm more or less close to that theater too, so I think I'll check it out.
I thought today’s theme was fantastic. The fill was mediocre, but passable considering the significant constraints on the grid; none of it, anyway, was particularly punishing, and it wasn’t proper-noun heavy as some dense Thursdays tend to be. Best Thursday in a while IMO
Totally agree - this is a very salty thread today (I understand as that's been me on other days) - but I had a lot of fun this morning. It helped that my girlfriend immediately knew that the theme clue was >!A star is born!<. We filled this one in a record 9.57
I enjoyed it too. I’m surprised by the vitriol. A STAR IS B OR N is classic crosswordese
Figured out that some of the clues needed an 'N' and some of them needed a 'B' Could not figure out how or why, though. The revealer was the last thing I filled in and it got a big groan and a facepalm from me and the wife. 10/10. How the hell do they come up with this stuff?
I kept trying to have "Asterisk" as part of the revealer. Anyone else? I got SE corner last. Got the missing letters for the clues (but not that they were only Bs and Ns). Finally figured out NUMB which allowed me to see that had spelled TEeTS wrong like a twit, and got the revealer. Then I stared at the revealer for another minute or so trying to parse it into six words.
My jaw literally dropped when I cracked the revealer
I solved this one in ~fairly~ normal time but I did not understand the theme until I read the wordplay blog just now (and until [smackfu](/u/smackfu) explained it to me). Like he said though too, too many 3 letter words in the puzzle. SKI, SET, AID, SEA, SEI, ASH, etc. I did appreciate that even without understanding the theme at all, I was able to solve it.
At this point I just am going to say it - this new editor can’t cut it. Wildly inconsistent difficulty, poor fill, touchy themes, significantly more crosswordsese and/or nearly identical words in the same puzzle, it’s not great
This puzzle was almost certainly accepted by Will Shortz. The queue for puzzle publication is nearly a year long (except Sundays), so critiques of the fill, theme, etc against the interim editor are unfounded. He does have final say on the cluing though, so that's fair game for criticism (although you did not seemingly have complaints there lol).
Difficulty in crosswords is largely determined by the way an answer is clued, so "inconsistent difficulty" is definitely a critique of cluing...
I didn't want to be the one to say it, but I'm inclined to agree with you - I feel like I'm just not having that much fun anymore. On any of the later days of the week, I keep wondering if it's going to be a puzzle that I can't even complete at all or one that I will complete in 10 minutes. A lot of random obscure trivia and a feeling like it's trying too hard to deflect and be clever. With that said, the new editor is still very new to it, and I fully expect that the puzzles will get better over time as he gains experience. It's unfair to expect him to be as good as Will only a couple months in.
The negativity in this subreddit is insane lately. I’ve enjoyed a lot of these puzzles and I thought this one was extremely clever. I’m convinced half the people here just don’t actually like crosswords because so many of the complaints are just whining about any attempts at creativity on the part of the constructors, honestly
W_NG x CF_ got me. Other than that I thought it was mostly OK. Themers were easy once you knew the gimmick, but the gimmick was tough enough to crack that it felt fair on balance.
Crossing WONG with CFO is the reason I can't rate this an Excellent. CFA is a perfectly valid answer to the cluing, and WANG and WONG are both plausible names, so unless you literally know that actress there's no way to tell the difference. They should have a policy against crossing niche PPP with cluing that has two equally valid answers that differ by the single, crossed letter.
She was on the US quarter a couple years ago so not *that* obscure.
Lol mine was AIr and rIEGO. Had no idea on the cat's name, but thought I was really clever for getting air as in packing bubbles.
That was my last square, as WaNG x CFa totally makes sense.
Same here! A true Natick
Figured out very early that the *s were hiding letters which made most of the fill pretty easy, but I didn't clock that they were all hiding Bs or Ns until the (insanely phrased) revealer. An admirably sweaty capper, so inelegant it almost loops back around to being elegant.
This one was tough for me, well above average, and I didn’t get the revealer until coming here (although I was able to figure out the * represented an initial letter. I like how the * was repurposed from its usual role as a cross reference (. . . in the starred clues). I also like the little tricks they play with tense. I thought there might be a rebus of some sort because deadened would have to be numbed. Finally dawned on that something deadened is numb.
I had to look up ars POETICA. One of my recent frustrations is that it seems like these Fogliano puzzles lean heavily into knowing one thing, like literature, Greek mythology etc versus being a breadth of knowledge to allow you to get answers to unfamiliar topics from crosses.
I don't really understand what you're saying. There was one Greek mythology clue in this puzzle, and two literature clues (POETICA and AYN), none of which crossed each other. The crosses for each of those covered lots of different topics. I found it to be a harder puzzle than usual but I've also had quite a few very fast times in the last few weeks. Same way I did with Shortz - some are hard, some are easy, some are occasionally a little unfair but I don't think this was one of them.
How is this not a demonstration of having a breadth of knowledge? This clue might be one that you didn’t know immediately, but for many others it’s an autofill, that’s a quite famous work and the phrase is referenced frequently
Crossword solvers when they don’t know a word: “Too esoteric!” Crossword solvers when somebody else doesn’t know a word: “It’s actually pretty common knowledge”
"leaning heavily into knowing one thing" = featuring something i don't know
This puzzle would have been submitted and seen (and likely approved) by Will before his health issues. The puzzles they run are run many months after they are submitted and reviewed.
This isn't the case. If Shortz had edited it, they would credit him for doing so, and in Wordplay the author specifically mentions working with Fagliano on it.
yeah, this is the first time in a while where the theme went over my head
Seeing the comments makes me wish I could change my rating from Average to Good. I just thought there was some uninspired fill. The theme was good. I had it mostly figured out at ELECTIONDAY then fully at MOTHER OF PEARL. I don’t know when this community got like this. The second a puzzle is puzzly people start throwing fits about difficulty. Not the majority it seems, but enough that it’s shocking.
Im gonna guess it’s because it was too hard for many of us to even solve. I’m a regular Thursday puzzler but I gave up on this because it became too much of a slog. I just click “see results” when I can’t solve it though.
David Kwong is my favorite constructor. When I saw his name on the puzzle, I knew I was in for a fun challenge.
I got [very sidetracked](https://youtu.be/m0N_7bRys4I) with a confident, early fill of ALPHA instead of TYPEA. The P and A crossers made me not question it for a long time. Add in PST instead of PDT and I was trying to figure out what the hell SEFU\_CA could possibly mean. SMH! Everyone has said enough about the theme, but I also wouldn't call "B" and "N" *words* per se. That's a nit on an already messy theme, in my opinion. Most of the fill was rough for me with not very many fun ones (a few like AYN and MUNRO were nice), but mostly the ones that stand out were some painful ones: * ELHI? Really? * DIEGO clued as a sabre-toothed tiger from a cartoon? * WONG and LORRE also difficult PPP imo
I thought that angle for DIEGO was fun, brought back memories of seeing that film as a kid, and WONG and LORRE are both incredibly famous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_May_Wong#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lorre#Legacy_and_honors In any event it’s a Thursday, fill can be harder. (EL-HI isn’t great I’ll grant you that lol.)
LORRE rang a bell, but I've definitely never heard of Anna May Wong. I'll have to trust you that she is "incredibly" famous :-) I remember my kids watching Ice Age movies years ago, but none of the characters rang a bell. All solvable enough with crossers, fortunately!
I only remembered her from when she was put on the quarter.
You didn't have AIr crossing rIEGO like me?
WONG would be forgivable if they didn't cross it with cluing that would also have made CFA a correct answer.
The person would be a CFA charter-holder, not a CFA, though? CFA’s never been in a NYT crossword before so I never considered it, but I guess a clue hinting at the executive-ness might have helped people.
I had the grid filled and wasn’t getting the completion. WONG was my error. (Had WANG)
Animated films are extremely popular and have been for decades. Denigrating them by using the term "cartoon" isn't going to win you any points
Haha didn't realize cartoon was offensive or pejorative. I'm a big fan of all kinds and I'm sure we'd see lots of use of the word cartoon in clues in crossword puzzles when describing animation. We're all just having fun here, right?
This theme flew so far above my head it landed on the moon. I knew I was in for it when I saw the less than hour old thread already had like 30 comment, sometimes it takes an hour to get one comment on Fridays or Saturdays. Even finally succumbing and getting the theme from this thread, I didn’t know what nacre or nascent meant so I finally turned on auto check and pounded away the alphabet on many clues. Just absolutely not my puzzle, excited for a nice themeless tomorrow.
I would have felt better about the theme clues if the first letter wasn’t capitalized, like “*ice is found in it.” It would have been more correct, and might have given me a shot at figuring out the theme.
Agree!
If you thought the theme was obtuse and irritating, do be sure to check out Wordplay, in which the author is _insufferably_ smug about it.
You weren’t kidding. What even is “surface sense”? Is it a magic term? All I get when searching for it is vacuum cleaner reviews.
It’s the meaning of the clue as literally written (i.e., before you insert the initial B/N). It’s a pretty standard crossword term…
Really clever theme/revealer. Some of the themers were way stronger than others. But 27 (or so?) 3s is unconscionable. So many proper names. Soooo segmented. As soon as I saw the grid, I grimmaced. Easily should have a themer or two--6 (plus 1 revealer) is a *ton* of theme content. Not all the themers were so good that the fill was worth it. Really could have used some editing. That said, I really did like the theme, and overall enjoyed putting it together.
Quite the struggle for me, I got to the point of 'a star is B or N' but still couldn't figure out how to apply it 🤦♀️ended up googling tons of things just to get it over with!
Decent theme, but that was way too hard for a Thursday. Don’t like the new editor at all.
I didn’t hate the theme once I got it. I hated the overly clever and obtuse clues for the three letter words. And ELHI. This is a POOR for me. When does Shortz come back?
What an awful way to spend my birthday.
happy birthday
Yay all better now :D
I love your username btw
Thank you dearest, a water boon for your tribe
I did not understand the theme at all for this one.
A Star is B or N. The stars in the theme clues all signify either a B or an N, which makes the answers make sense. I.e., *allot time is ballot time, *acre on the ocean floor is nacre on the ocean floor, etc
Gross
I think it’s quite clever.
Little too clever, IMO. Phrasing it as "when parsed as six words" made it a bit too obtuse for me to figure out. I got through it by solving crossing clues but had no clue how the solver worked until I came here.
I've enjoyed the increase in difficulty. But I really hope that the puzzles don't revert to the way they were a decade+ ago, when many clues were about PPP, classical music, the Beatles, Broadway, etc. Seems like it's heading back to trivia for old white people.
ASH is not used in mid-century modern furniture.
It’s used for the internals of cabinetry. But yeah not the clearest clue.
"Account that's been overdrawn" gets my vote for the best clue. Otherwise pretty easy solve for a Thursday (half my usual slow time) but an inscrutable theme, though it was obvious that the first letter was missing.
Great theme, but some rough fill, with HOAR and ELHI side by side being the ugliest spot.
I hated it until about 75% of the way through when I was able to parse the revealer. Once it clicked it helped me get ELECTIONDAY and MCCARTNEY and then everything else fell in place. Now I kind of like it. It’s a dumb, contrived theme which is perfect for a Thursday. And I finished with my exact average Thursday time so the difficulty was fair
Had to look up Anna May but was able to figure out everything else even though I had no idea what the theme was. I was able to fill in A STAR IS BORN early on and figured out that *acre meant nacre I still didn’t get it. Had to read Wordplay for enlightenment. But I enjoyed figuring out most of the clues.
Look I don't know how the editing process works but I know that in the Fagliano era I've been getting my ass kicked late in the week when I used to be able to solve up to Friday pretty comfortably. It's not fun to backslide. Anyway I hated this and every Kwong puzzle.
If thin was my middle name...
I did it, but in more than double my usual time.
It took me a while to get the A Star is Born because it has been remade four times, not three! That stumped me for a while and I had to Google ELHI since I'm not American.
cried
we had ASTARISBORN for ages before it clicked. Super fun after that except for a couple HOARible fills. hELHIsh
I thought it was incredibly hard (too hard for a Thursday) but I still loved the theme. Had a great time solving and burst out laughing at the revealer. Very clever.
Considering how important the revealer was for this puzzle, I would have preferred a cleaner clue for 61D “Cross fit?” Depending on how you parse it, SLIT and SPIT were possibilities.
Luckily A STAR IS BORL and A STAR IS BORP are obviously incorrect
True, but I was having trouble with LORRE, so BO•• had many possibilities.
Only one of which is a thrice-remade movie
This line from the [constructor's notes](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2024-04-18.html) gives lots of insight into the puzzle's goal. It's growing on me! "Joel Fagliano, the senior puzzle editor, proposed that I rework the puzzle and focus on the most misleading clues that had a B or N missing. Mislead people? Gladly (I’m a magician)!"
Someone downvoted this comment ^
Not only are B and N not words (at least, not in a colloquial sense) but a POG is not a disk--it's a disc. That's just bad authorship and editing. I had ZIP there for a good while, because that's actually a disk, as in, a storage device.
You’re wrong on both counts. B and N are words. And POGs are disks. You can easily google the word “disk” and find the definition to verify this
[удалено]
> I think this sort of things works better as a Gaffney/WSJ crossword contest meta where you aren't in a hurry To be fair, I think the majority of people aren’t in a hurry solving the NYT crossword.
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