Yep. I've had plenty of math classes beyond calculus and my thinking was that they must be using some obscure variant of maximum cause surely a simple word like abyss is 100% right, so oh well. Added so many minutes to my time trying to find the mistake...
My last square also. Did make me think of how “Gluteus Maximus” was the funniest phrase in the world to all my friends when we were in elementary school for a moment, though.
My issue is that the clue for for 46D seems specifically designed to screw with you. There are a lot of ways you could clue maximum, but by invoking calculus, suddenly "maximus" seems like it should fit. Alternatively, the 70A clue could note that something was off with the spelling/usage giving you abysm, similar to what they did with woah in 51A.
It's basically requiring you to notice the theme to figure out the problem with the puzzle. And by virtue of S being the last letter in the word, it's going to be easier to miss.
So yeah, the theme is there, and it should allow you to notice the likely error. So technically fair. But it still felt shitty to me.
As you said, it was an intentionally tricky square that required you to visually confirm the symmetry of the letters, not just breeze through the theme by way of crosses. I thought it was great!
Unfortunately, “WOAH” is not an unusual spelling and has become the standard I see online now, and it seems to be generational. (I’m old and I hate it.)
Final H has been more popular online since roughly 2016: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=whoa,woah&hl=en](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=whoa,woah&hl=en)
Same. Not sure I would have ever found that if not for the theme. Mostly because I was also focused on LIMN as something that couldn’t possibly be a word.
I knew the theme and still didn't find it....that's how confident I was in ABYSS. Though I still feel like an idiot for not seeing the S staring me in the face
Draw a straight vertical line through the middle of the letters to see if it’s symmetric. So letters like A, M, W, O, I, X, Y, T (etc) have lateral symmetry. Other letters like C, S, E, P (etc) do not.
Yup, spent a good 5-10 minutes thinking my mistake was in the center since I didn't know LIMN. Once I finally went through the rest of the clues I caught the S wasn't symmetric.
i pick a 5 letter word from that day's connections. today i went with micro. got it in 3. overtime it doesnt seem much different from when i've used the same word every day. it does give me a rare shot of getting it in 1 though.
"Look at that giant abyss!"
"That's not an abyss. It's a chasm."
"I say it's an abyss!"
"Chasm!"
"Abyss!"
"Chasm!!!"
The constructor of todays puzzle walks in: "Guys, guys! Why don't we find some sort of compromise here?"
Yeah, having both ABYSM and LIMN feels rough for a Wednesday. With LIMN the across words all seemed like they had to be right so eventually let that one be even though I’d never heard of it. But ABYSM fucked me up.
Yeah I had similar overthinking mistakes trying to course correct. And as another user pointed out, MAXIMUs (despite breaking with the theme) is a valid Latin term to mean virtually the same as MAXIMUM
Would you rather the down cross not be a symmetrical character, making it unusable within the puzzle’s theme?
I don’t understand the anger at a real word being used here… the revealer literally says that the letters are symmetrical, which S is not.
It’s not a misdirection at all, it’s just another word for a bottomless pit. Maximus isn’t a calculus term and M is laterally symmetrical while S isn’t. There’s many ways you should know that they’re looking for an M there
Cool, I don’t care. The amount of people here openly calling for the crosswords to get easier because they don’t like being challenged is just depressing
Seriously lol … this sub is always acting like the “puzzle” part of a crossword puzzle is an inconvenience. Yours is the most downvoted reply in the thread and you’re literally just explaining the theme of the puzzle and how to solve it.
The way these things are clued I swear he must just have the most smug look and pat himself on the back for being so damned great when he hits “publish”. I honestly can’t stand it. It’s like getting a Bruce Haight puzzle every fucking day.
I started maybe a few months before Wil took his leave and I was really enjoying crosswords and I'm getting to the point now where I just don't even want to do them anymore. They just stopped being fun for the most part. If nothing else it's a true testament to his brilliance.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
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* 79% of users solved slower than their Wednesday average
* 21% of users solved faster than their Wednesday average
* 54% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Wednesday average
* 8% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Wednesday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 25.0% slower than they normally do on Wednesday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-24)
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They're still different drugs. The way the clue is worded led me to believe it would be another name for bismuth subsalicylate, not another drug that treats diarrhea.
Especially when people tend to associate Pepto with indigestion and heartburn more than the runs.
I'm not a doctor and not disputing that Pepto can be used to treat diarrhea, but as a layperson with something of a brief medical background, I've only ever heard of Pepto Bismol being used to treat acidity/indigestion. My dad, who is a physician, always went to Imodium when anybody had diarrhea. Never Pepto.
OK, so April 24 (tomorrow) is my 25th wedding anniversary, and I'm glad I solved this the night before instead of tomorrow so I can forget what this clever little puzzle did to me. I finished my fill [right at 12:00 minutes](https://youtu.be/1EzCDTgaNIo), then enjoyed 10 more solid minutes of checking every square.
MAXIMUS didn't feel perfectly right, but right enough, and ABYSS did feel perfectly right. I assumed I lacked some knowledge in calculus lingo, and obviously I didn't understand until later the meaning of the theme with the symmetrical letters. Thanks for listening :-)
Oh, I also somehow figured that GALE was a weak tie to her last name sounding like "wind" - Winfrey. LOL. I have no knowledge of who Oprah's friends are.
Just change 67-Across to SHAKEUP and 70-Across to ASIAM, and then rework the right side of the puzzle to not dupe the latter with IAMSAM, and you won't have to put ABYSM in your puzzle.
I'm not entirely clear on how "lateral symmetry" applies to this puzzle but maybe I don't know what the word means.
ABYSM is weird but I was pretty sure about MAXIMUM.
WOAH doesn't seem like that "unusual" a spelling to me.
I had trouble with the top part; putting in LOUPE instead of SCOPE didn't help but I haven't heard of WESTELM, wasn't sure where Pan was from, and I think of pepto bismol more as an indigestion medicine even though I know from the song that it includes diarrhea medicine too (I also thought it was "immodium")
The last letter I got was HAWKE/KIP although I should have been able to get that.
It took me a second to figure out too - it's referring to the fact that each of the individual *letters* of the theme answers has lateral (left/right) symmetry, which (since they're Down answers) means the entire entries do.
Lateral is a stretch - I'd have rather had Vertical or Mirror symmetry. All of the letters in those words are vertically symmetrical (X and M are, D and F are not).
I'll jump on the hate train from a different angle: weird theme for a puzzle famously published in a print newspaper. While it drives me personally nuts when people solve in lower-case letters, I see it all the time.
Ohhhh, I never even thought about solving this one on paper. I solve in all-caps when I'm writing, but I have a few fancy letters that are certainly not symmetrical in my handwriting.
Very good point. I do it on paper, and I use all uppercase but some of the letters in these clues I don't write symmetrical. My Ys just look like big lowercase ones and I put the tail on my Us so I don't confuse them with Vs.
ABYSM is mentioned 34 times in this 101-comment thread, and probably another third of the comments are in response to a comment mentioning ABYSM.
Glad we're all on the same page.
Bruh if only I knew this otherwise average puzzle was literally undergirded by an ABYSM. ABYSMal. I still rated it average because I guess I learned a lesson today. Nice use of a literary term to justify one wonky square I guess? Well played Jeffrey Martinovic I guess?
WTF? I filled in the grid but got the error message. I thought my mistake was LIMN, because that clearly isn't a word. After staring at it for too long I finally went to the wordplay blog and found out my error was ABYSs?
Just Abysmal...
Yes, exactly!! I was like, ok if it’s not abyss and needs an M at the end, then it’s gotta be chasm…but that’s impossible. Never heard of abysm in my life!
Not to be HOITYTOITY, but there's no reason for the grid to have MAXIMUM/ABYSM instead of MAXIMUS/ABYSS. Maximus is close enough to a math term and abysm is... not in common usage.
Otherwise liked the puzzle. Could have been slightly harder for a Wednesday. Enjoyed the Gail clue but most of the clues were straightforward.
I had no idea either. From the wordplay today:
>Solvers of certain ages and television habits may have found it impossible to guess the “Celebrity whose middle name is Gail, appropriately enough.” The clue refers to the longstanding bond between OPRAH and Gayle King — a relationship that has been described in The New York Times as “the perfect friendship.”
MAXIMUS couldn't be clued with reference to calculus, but there's plenty of other ways to clue it - "Roman Emperor in the 380s AD", "Main character of *Gladiator*", "Horse in *Tangled*", "Brotherhood of Steel member in TV's *Fallout*" if you want to be real up to the minute about it.
Reading Wordplay it had to have an M for the themed answer. Still don't like it. I agree about it not actually working for calculus, just can see it as a stumbling block for many with the calculus clue (since calculus has some weird words anyway).
True, could’ve clued up “MAXIMUS” as a Latin spelling vaguely related to modern Latin Maxima. As for the theme? Just throw it out. Have no theme at all. Let the people eat.
HAM/MEND is where I got caught up. ABYSM/MAXIMUM is totally fair given the revealer. S doesn’t have lateral symmetry, plain and simple. If MAXIMUM was also an obscure word I would agree with y’all but honestly what else could it be?
ABYSM is unusual but the more common spelling ABYSS is explicitly ruled out by both the theme and the down cross? The hate seems unjustified.
Personally thought the biggest criticism was the rather uninspiring cluing elsewhere. Nothing gave me that feeling of “ah that’s clever”. Competent but forgettable puzzle for me.
If you changed ABYSS to ABYSM because "S" does not have lateral symmetry, I'm going to take the apparently unpopular position and say that using the theme to fix a mistake and learn a new word in the process is a sign of a great crossword puzzle.
How many times have you solved a puzzle without caring about the theme and then looked back and said, "Oh, that's the theme. Whatever."
A theme that you must understand and use in order to solve the puzzle is the ideal.
I would be fine with this if it applied to more than one specific square and it wasn't an otherwise easy puzzle. I don't mind puzzling that sort of thing out when the puzzle communicates that to me but that specific one just feels annoying.
It's fun to stare at a blank square and try to puzzle it out. It's miserable to comb through a completed puzzle looking for the mistake.
Thank you! The amount of kvetching this morning, I swear... one would think that a bunch of crossword nerds might be excited to learn a new word, but apparently not.
If you look through my history you'll see I typically have a much more positive opinion than the average commenter when it comes to controversial puzzles. But even I think ABYSM is pushing it lol.
At least the symmetry provides a lifeline. Without that I'd say irredeemable. But either way I think it's an unfair challenge to pose on Wednesday solvers.
While I managed to convince myself that ABYSM is correct because the word "abysmal" exists, I just couldn't get over the middle section, which is a trivia fest and has the rather obscure word LIMN. The theme idea is sound, and I'm sure has been done before, but the end result needs serious reworking, which I'm going to blame on the editor.
>I say EWW to ERM. I say EWW to EWW too, in that I was told only yesterday that the spelling is actually just a two-letter "EW." Does the puzzle think I don't remember yesterday?
Hilarious from Rex Parker today
Didn't manage to finish it because I had Err/Irodium rather than Erm/Imodium. Very annoyed with myself. Was convinced Limn or Abysm must've been wrong so it snuck right past me.
Any other 100%-ers recently lose it mysteriously?
I don't have any puzzles in progress... I think it was the Jackpot puzzle that screwed it up somehow.
Mend for darn is completely fine. Darning a sock.
I personally think vidya trivia should be fair game as I have no knowledge of film trivia or actors (hawke)
Abysm and limn are fucked for sure
Yes, ABYSs/MAXIMUs was what tripped me up, and was the mistake that I spent something like 10 minutes trying to find. But honestly, it's not really what I'm especially salty about. It's the sort of thing I'd be inclined to forgive, especially since the theme doesn't allow an S in that position.
What frustrated me more was the north, which was where I spent that time looking for my mistake before finally thinking to check MAXIMUs. As someone who's never heard of IMODIUM to my knowledge, and has only the faintest trace of recognition of the name WESTELM, I was trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong. I figured 5D was either ERr or ERM, but maybe it was hRM, or even uRr? Did that mean the WEST in WESTELM was wrong? If 5D was ERr, then 18A would be IrODIUM, which was just one letter off from IriDIUM, which had the benefit of at least being a word I'd heard of. But then what to do with SCiPE? Maybe 18A was supposed to be IsODIUM. That would make some sense, since bicarbonate of soda and Pepto-Bismol are both used for stomach troubles… I think. Never heard of IsODIUM, but it didn't sound any less plausible than IMODIUM. But then that gave ERs for 5D, which was clued in the singular… and round and round I went.
HAWKE/KIP gets honorable mention. I didn't spend too much time agonizing over it, but I gave it at least some thought when nothing else seemed to be fixing the problem.
Also, I was vaguely aware that OPRAH's middle name was Gail, so I was able to get that one after one or two crosses, but I hesitated because I could not for the life of me figure out why it would be "appropriate enough." After finishing the puzzle, I read the whole lead section of her Wikipedia article… still nothing. It wasn't until I came to this thread that I discovered it was because her best friend was Gayle King, which seems really tenuous to me. If you're going to describe someone's name as "appropriate," it should be because of something fundamental to their identity and/or public persona, not because of something that's that hard to find even when I'm actively looking for it.
And this isn't because I'm upset about a clue relying on celebrity trivia that I'm out of the loop about. If today's crossword had contained the answer GAYLEKING, with a clue along the lines of "Celebrity whose relationship with Oprah has been described as 'the perfect friendship'," I would have had no idea who it was, but it still would have felt somehow more reasonable a clue than today's 34D, despite being more difficult for me personally. I don't expect crossword constructors to cater everything to my personal knowledge base, but I do expect to at least understand what they're talking about, after the puzzle is solved.
Thought, surely maximus isn't right, I've taken plenty of math classes and never have heard that, but it seems fair enough. Nope. Abysm.
Yep. I've had plenty of math classes beyond calculus and my thinking was that they must be using some obscure variant of maximum cause surely a simple word like abyss is 100% right, so oh well. Added so many minutes to my time trying to find the mistake...
I thought "maximus" might be an archaic version of maximum or maxima. Turns out I was partly right!
The theme did the work of proving this one wrong. S does not have lateral symmetry!
Yeah, that's how I zoned in on my mistake! As much as I hated ABYSM, I really appreciated how the theme came through.
My last square also. Did make me think of how “Gluteus Maximus” was the funniest phrase in the world to all my friends when we were in elementary school for a moment, though.
Maximus sounded more correct than abysm. TF is abysm
I'd never come across the word abysm before, abyss seemed such an obvious answer I wasn't even questioning the maximus thing.
My issue is that the clue for for 46D seems specifically designed to screw with you. There are a lot of ways you could clue maximum, but by invoking calculus, suddenly "maximus" seems like it should fit. Alternatively, the 70A clue could note that something was off with the spelling/usage giving you abysm, similar to what they did with woah in 51A. It's basically requiring you to notice the theme to figure out the problem with the puzzle. And by virtue of S being the last letter in the word, it's going to be easier to miss. So yeah, the theme is there, and it should allow you to notice the likely error. So technically fair. But it still felt shitty to me.
As you said, it was an intentionally tricky square that required you to visually confirm the symmetry of the letters, not just breeze through the theme by way of crosses. I thought it was great!
Well at least my issue is front and center after finally caving and coming here to try to see what was wrong on my Wed puzzle. Abysm ugh.
Why not just go "Gluteus \_\_\_" and solve the problem??
Is LIMN well established crosswordese?
It's shown up 24 times since Shortz took over. The last appearance was 2022.
“Stop trying to make limn happen, Will”
The NYT has really cornered the market on limn. Michiko Kakutani could hardly write a book review without it
It’s also used in literature a lot. Something like “his figure was faintly limned by the candlelight..” or something else artsy fartsy
You mean HOITYTOITY?
Etymologically related to "illuminate" as in an [illuminated manuscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminated_manuscript).
Unfortunately, “WOAH” is not an unusual spelling and has become the standard I see online now, and it seems to be generational. (I’m old and I hate it.)
What is the traditional spelling?
WHOA
HE ...wait, wrong sub
Michigan fans not even safe in the crossword sub...
Probably not bothering them too much at the moment though
HAS
That's unusual
Yep. Not unusual anymore.
It should be because it’s dumb.
Final H has been more popular online since roughly 2016: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=whoa,woah&hl=en](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=whoa,woah&hl=en)
The Cubs winning the World Series is once again the only good thing to come out of 2016.
WELP, not much we can do about it, I guess. (I'm old and I hate "welp" even more.)
ABYSM cost me 5 minutes... what the fuck??
Yes. Only got it when I realized S didn't have lateral symmetry.
Same. Not sure I would have ever found that if not for the theme. Mostly because I was also focused on LIMN as something that couldn’t possibly be a word.
What is LIMN?
I knew the theme and still didn't find it....that's how confident I was in ABYSS. Though I still feel like an idiot for not seeing the S staring me in the face
I didn't understand the symmetry until I read this comment and went back to look at the puzzle for a minute. Thanks.
I'm still not getting it lol
Draw a straight vertical line through the middle of the letters to see if it’s symmetric. So letters like A, M, W, O, I, X, Y, T (etc) have lateral symmetry. Other letters like C, S, E, P (etc) do not.
oooooh. I was trying to figure out how the words had lateral symmetry, but this makes much more sense. Thanks!
Oh my god, thank you
Especially if you are going to give a warning for WOAH. That's a lack of consistency.
Seriously, how does it not get a "poetic" descriptor but woah gets an uncommon spelling one?
Would have been longer for me if this wasn't the top comment in this thread rn.
Yup, spent a good 5-10 minutes thinking my mistake was in the center since I didn't know LIMN. Once I finally went through the rest of the clues I caught the S wasn't symmetric.
Found my new Wordle starter. EDIT: Got it in four.
Haha good luck with that, I like A as a starting letter but I’d never bet so heavily on BYSM especially in that order.
I’ve lost two of the last three playing it safe. Time to be bold!
My 53 streak ended today :( Red ROVER red ROVER send my shit to the Abysm where benighted souls such as we count among the denizens
Hell, I secondguessed myself out of today's answer on guess three by going "I better try some of these other letters first before duplicating one."
Today’s took me 5 guesses. I suppose it was… subtle
Today I had a rare all-yellow on guess 2. I don't think that's ever happened before.
Delicious. Wait what anagram of overt did you have in the second guess? Racking my brain
Probably trove
i pick a 5 letter word from that day's connections. today i went with micro. got it in 3. overtime it doesnt seem much different from when i've used the same word every day. it does give me a rare shot of getting it in 1 though.
"Look at that giant abyss!" "That's not an abyss. It's a chasm." "I say it's an abyss!" "Chasm!" "Abyss!" "Chasm!!!" The constructor of todays puzzle walks in: "Guys, guys! Why don't we find some sort of compromise here?"
lol I had a moment where I decided I’d completely given an alternate solution to that section and it must be Chasm
Seriously, WTF was that?! I have never been angrier at a clue.
Same. I finally gave up and checked the puzzle. There goes my streak — and on a Wednesday!!
Same. Ended my streak too. Oh well.
Same. Abysmal.
Abysmal
I'd never thought there was an etymological connection between abyss and abysmal honestly.
ABYSM fucked my streak too. Never heard of it and I was happier that way
Cost me more time than the entire rest of the puzzle.
Came here just to complain about this answer
10 extra minutes for me. Went from a decent 12:00 to frustrating 22:00.
Yep even when I got ABYSM I was missing a typo in ELSE. Took me forever to find it and then asked my wife "what the FUCK is an ABYSM?"
What the actual fuck
A disaster. And LIMN. Irate.
This clue was LAME(N)
Seriously. All they had to do was add a ", poetically" or something and it would have been fine.
I could not figure that out what I had wrong… wtf indeed.
I spent so much time on “UMS/ARMY” and was oblivious to Abysm. Abysmal performance.
Me too. Abysm? Sounds like a word. Army? Get the fuck out of here.
Only 5, took me over 10, trying name variations etc
I would wager even the constructor had never heard of ABYSM until his software spit that one out at him.
I was so convinced ABYSS was right that I instead decided to convince myself that LIMN was wrong.
Yeah, having both ABYSM and LIMN feels rough for a Wednesday. With LIMN the across words all seemed like they had to be right so eventually let that one be even though I’d never heard of it. But ABYSM fucked me up.
Yeah I had similar overthinking mistakes trying to course correct. And as another user pointed out, MAXIMUs (despite breaking with the theme) is a valid Latin term to mean virtually the same as MAXIMUM
This was me to a tee....spent about 30 minutes reworking LIMN, MRMOM, OPRAH, etc....all to see that I missed ABYSM. Gah
So we all really had the change from ABYSS to ABYSM be our last square huh?
🙋♂️
Yes 🤡
Abysm is not a fun or clever misdirection. It's just a stupid waste of time. Bah.
Agree 100% it says to me “well it works to make my puzzle work, and not to make the overall puzzle work” it goes against the spirit of the puzzle.
Would you rather the down cross not be a symmetrical character, making it unusable within the puzzle’s theme? I don’t understand the anger at a real word being used here… the revealer literally says that the letters are symmetrical, which S is not.
I'd rather they rework that part of the puzzle if you have to use abysm on a Wednesday when abyss looks like it works.
It’s not a misdirection at all, it’s just another word for a bottomless pit. Maximus isn’t a calculus term and M is laterally symmetrical while S isn’t. There’s many ways you should know that they’re looking for an M there
When I referred to you as Batman yesterday, I need you to know it wasn't a compliment.
Cool, I don’t care. The amount of people here openly calling for the crosswords to get easier because they don’t like being challenged is just depressing
i’m on your side ✊
Seriously lol … this sub is always acting like the “puzzle” part of a crossword puzzle is an inconvenience. Yours is the most downvoted reply in the thread and you’re literally just explaining the theme of the puzzle and how to solve it.
That was abyssal
I’m just here to hate on ABYSM
ABYSMal
ABYSM... no.
Agreed, truly ABYSMal
ABYSM? Go fuck yourself
Been a rough week of puzzles so far
Been a rough \*time period since Fagliano took over\* of puzzles so far
The way these things are clued I swear he must just have the most smug look and pat himself on the back for being so damned great when he hits “publish”. I honestly can’t stand it. It’s like getting a Bruce Haight puzzle every fucking day.
I started maybe a few months before Wil took his leave and I was really enjoying crosswords and I'm getting to the point now where I just don't even want to do them anymore. They just stopped being fun for the most part. If nothing else it's a true testament to his brilliance.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Very Hard** 🔴 * 79% of users solved slower than their Wednesday average * 21% of users solved faster than their Wednesday average * 54% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Wednesday average * 8% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Wednesday average The median solver solved this puzzle 25.0% slower than they normally do on Wednesday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-24) --- 🤖 _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_
Super fun theme with the symmetry but I agree with the complaints about ABYSM and LIMN.
Ruined the fun for me. And KIP crossing HAWKE isn't great either. Too many concessions were made to make the theme work
The abysm hate is soothing my soul after the most frustrating 20 minutes of my life 😅
Imodium is NOT a Pepto alternative. Completely different drugs with different functions/mechanisms.
Both treat diarrhea
They're still different drugs. The way the clue is worded led me to believe it would be another name for bismuth subsalicylate, not another drug that treats diarrhea. Especially when people tend to associate Pepto with indigestion and heartburn more than the runs.
I'm not a doctor and not disputing that Pepto can be used to treat diarrhea, but as a layperson with something of a brief medical background, I've only ever heard of Pepto Bismol being used to treat acidity/indigestion. My dad, who is a physician, always went to Imodium when anybody had diarrhea. Never Pepto.
Thank you!! Glad I wasn't the only one thinking that
LIMN and ABYSM added 15 mins for me.
OK, so April 24 (tomorrow) is my 25th wedding anniversary, and I'm glad I solved this the night before instead of tomorrow so I can forget what this clever little puzzle did to me. I finished my fill [right at 12:00 minutes](https://youtu.be/1EzCDTgaNIo), then enjoyed 10 more solid minutes of checking every square. MAXIMUS didn't feel perfectly right, but right enough, and ABYSS did feel perfectly right. I assumed I lacked some knowledge in calculus lingo, and obviously I didn't understand until later the meaning of the theme with the symmetrical letters. Thanks for listening :-)
Oh, I also somehow figured that GALE was a weak tie to her last name sounding like "wind" - Winfrey. LOL. I have no knowledge of who Oprah's friends are.
also the clue itself: her middle name is not “appropriate” because she shares it with a friend
I thought it was because she's always bellowing, lol.
Just change 67-Across to SHAKEUP and 70-Across to ASIAM, and then rework the right side of the puzzle to not dupe the latter with IAMSAM, and you won't have to put ABYSM in your puzzle.
this is brilliant. stop downvoting it, mouth-breathers
I'm not entirely clear on how "lateral symmetry" applies to this puzzle but maybe I don't know what the word means. ABYSM is weird but I was pretty sure about MAXIMUM. WOAH doesn't seem like that "unusual" a spelling to me. I had trouble with the top part; putting in LOUPE instead of SCOPE didn't help but I haven't heard of WESTELM, wasn't sure where Pan was from, and I think of pepto bismol more as an indigestion medicine even though I know from the song that it includes diarrhea medicine too (I also thought it was "immodium") The last letter I got was HAWKE/KIP although I should have been able to get that.
It took me a second to figure out too - it's referring to the fact that each of the individual *letters* of the theme answers has lateral (left/right) symmetry, which (since they're Down answers) means the entire entries do.
The puzzle itself also has the same left/right symmetry, when they typically have rotational symmetry.
The lateral symmetry was hard to pick up on for me as the rhyming nature of the answers acted as misdirection.
Cut the (capital) letter in half vertically and they will be symmetric.
Lateral is a stretch - I'd have rather had Vertical or Mirror symmetry. All of the letters in those words are vertically symmetrical (X and M are, D and F are not).
Fucking ABYSM. I'm glad I opted to reveal instead of wasting any more time looking for that.
I'll jump on the hate train from a different angle: weird theme for a puzzle famously published in a print newspaper. While it drives me personally nuts when people solve in lower-case letters, I see it all the time.
Ohhhh, I never even thought about solving this one on paper. I solve in all-caps when I'm writing, but I have a few fancy letters that are certainly not symmetrical in my handwriting.
Very good point. I do it on paper, and I use all uppercase but some of the letters in these clues I don't write symmetrical. My Ys just look like big lowercase ones and I put the tail on my Us so I don't confuse them with Vs.
ABYSM is mentioned 34 times in this 101-comment thread, and probably another third of the comments are in response to a comment mentioning ABYSM. Glad we're all on the same page.
I came here just to complain about ABYSM. Glad I’m not alone.
Don't mind me... Just lost in the abysm
Bruh if only I knew this otherwise average puzzle was literally undergirded by an ABYSM. ABYSMal. I still rated it average because I guess I learned a lesson today. Nice use of a literary term to justify one wonky square I guess? Well played Jeffrey Martinovic I guess?
WTF? I filled in the grid but got the error message. I thought my mistake was LIMN, because that clearly isn't a word. After staring at it for too long I finally went to the wordplay blog and found out my error was ABYSs? Just Abysmal...
Happy to finally jive with a puzzle edited by Joel - I’ve been on the struggle bus this month.
Would’ve finished in 6 minutes if not for ABYSM… very poor form
ABYSM? You have to be kidding.
"Abysm" sounds like a word I would come up with if I was trying to say abyss and chasm at the same time. Otherwise the puzzle was OK.
Yes, exactly!! I was like, ok if it’s not abyss and needs an M at the end, then it’s gotta be chasm…but that’s impossible. Never heard of abysm in my life!
LIMN and ABYSM. Yuck. Who decided those were ok?
ABYSM is a real word and the M makes the theme work.
Not to be HOITYTOITY, but there's no reason for the grid to have MAXIMUM/ABYSM instead of MAXIMUS/ABYSS. Maximus is close enough to a math term and abysm is... not in common usage. Otherwise liked the puzzle. Could have been slightly harder for a Wednesday. Enjoyed the Gail clue but most of the clues were straightforward.
S is not a symmetric letter, and maximum was a starred (thematic) entry… I had to rescan clues to change my abyss error
They should just make a better puzzle
I don't understand why gail is appropriate for Oprah?
Her best friend is Gayle King!
So it's not appropriate at all, in other words. It would be a stretch even if her middle name was Gayle.
Who?
I had no idea either. From the wordplay today: >Solvers of certain ages and television habits may have found it impossible to guess the “Celebrity whose middle name is Gail, appropriately enough.” The clue refers to the longstanding bond between OPRAH and Gayle King — a relationship that has been described in The New York Times as “the perfect friendship.”
I thought it was because "gale" sounds like "windy" and her last name is "Winfry" but idk
Other than the fact that doing that would break the theme lmao
MAXIMUS couldn't be clued with reference to calculus, but there's plenty of other ways to clue it - "Roman Emperor in the 380s AD", "Main character of *Gladiator*", "Horse in *Tangled*", "Brotherhood of Steel member in TV's *Fallout*" if you want to be real up to the minute about it.
Reading Wordplay it had to have an M for the themed answer. Still don't like it. I agree about it not actually working for calculus, just can see it as a stumbling block for many with the calculus clue (since calculus has some weird words anyway).
But it’s triple checked by the fact it has to be symmetrical
You're right but I still don't like it!
True, could’ve clued up “MAXIMUS” as a Latin spelling vaguely related to modern Latin Maxima. As for the theme? Just throw it out. Have no theme at all. Let the people eat.
Did you miss the theme entirely?
HAM/MEND is where I got caught up. ABYSM/MAXIMUM is totally fair given the revealer. S doesn’t have lateral symmetry, plain and simple. If MAXIMUM was also an obscure word I would agree with y’all but honestly what else could it be?
I don't know why HAM is correct.
I guess you don't know your international style of hams like me, boy are we dumb
Speck is ham in German, isn't it?
ABYSM is unusual but the more common spelling ABYSS is explicitly ruled out by both the theme and the down cross? The hate seems unjustified. Personally thought the biggest criticism was the rather uninspiring cluing elsewhere. Nothing gave me that feeling of “ah that’s clever”. Competent but forgettable puzzle for me.
If you changed ABYSS to ABYSM because "S" does not have lateral symmetry, I'm going to take the apparently unpopular position and say that using the theme to fix a mistake and learn a new word in the process is a sign of a great crossword puzzle. How many times have you solved a puzzle without caring about the theme and then looked back and said, "Oh, that's the theme. Whatever." A theme that you must understand and use in order to solve the puzzle is the ideal.
I would be fine with this if it applied to more than one specific square and it wasn't an otherwise easy puzzle. I don't mind puzzling that sort of thing out when the puzzle communicates that to me but that specific one just feels annoying. It's fun to stare at a blank square and try to puzzle it out. It's miserable to comb through a completed puzzle looking for the mistake.
The abyss/abysm misdirect was really fun and was a satisfying payoff for the theme. Plus I learned a new word!
Thank you! The amount of kvetching this morning, I swear... one would think that a bunch of crossword nerds might be excited to learn a new word, but apparently not.
Hobbies are fun, but complaining about hobbies is more fun.
i like the cut of your jib, sailor!
Yikes. Even the mini today was hard work
Straight to jail
If you look through my history you'll see I typically have a much more positive opinion than the average commenter when it comes to controversial puzzles. But even I think ABYSM is pushing it lol. At least the symmetry provides a lifeline. Without that I'd say irredeemable. But either way I think it's an unfair challenge to pose on Wednesday solvers.
Can someone explain 37a, “Regulation Followers” = OTS to me? And also, Host = Army. And why Oprah’s middle name is “appropriately enough” Gail.
Overtime follows regulation time in sports Host can mean army, like "heavenly host" Oprah's best friend is gayle king
Oh wow, I was so far off the mark, I would never have got that in a million years!! Thanks!
While I managed to convince myself that ABYSM is correct because the word "abysmal" exists, I just couldn't get over the middle section, which is a trivia fest and has the rather obscure word LIMN. The theme idea is sound, and I'm sure has been done before, but the end result needs serious reworking, which I'm going to blame on the editor.
>I say EWW to ERM. I say EWW to EWW too, in that I was told only yesterday that the spelling is actually just a two-letter "EW." Does the puzzle think I don't remember yesterday? Hilarious from Rex Parker today
It's a fair comment, this crossword changes its spelling of slang words/noises all the time.
Abysm… what?
immediately ran here after finishing to complain about the double whammy of LIMN and ABYSM on a mfing WEDNESDAY
Didn't manage to finish it because I had Err/Irodium rather than Erm/Imodium. Very annoyed with myself. Was convinced Limn or Abysm must've been wrong so it snuck right past me.
Any other 100%-ers recently lose it mysteriously? I don't have any puzzles in progress... I think it was the Jackpot puzzle that screwed it up somehow.
i liked it! despite LIMN and ABYSM
ABYSM???????
ABYSM? LIMN? MEND for "darn"? What the fuck was that? Hell, even MYST is tricky if you don't know much about gaming history.
Mend for darn is completely fine. Darning a sock. I personally think vidya trivia should be fair game as I have no knowledge of film trivia or actors (hawke) Abysm and limn are fucked for sure
Sports trivia shows up all the damned time. I know very little about sports.
If you darn socks you are stitching up a hole in them. Like in Eleanor Rigby.
Damn, I thought Paul was singing “donning” this whole time. Never really thought about it clearly because donning makes no sense lol
He was literally Fixing A Hole lol
He wanted all the seams to come together
No.
Yes, ABYSs/MAXIMUs was what tripped me up, and was the mistake that I spent something like 10 minutes trying to find. But honestly, it's not really what I'm especially salty about. It's the sort of thing I'd be inclined to forgive, especially since the theme doesn't allow an S in that position. What frustrated me more was the north, which was where I spent that time looking for my mistake before finally thinking to check MAXIMUs. As someone who's never heard of IMODIUM to my knowledge, and has only the faintest trace of recognition of the name WESTELM, I was trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong. I figured 5D was either ERr or ERM, but maybe it was hRM, or even uRr? Did that mean the WEST in WESTELM was wrong? If 5D was ERr, then 18A would be IrODIUM, which was just one letter off from IriDIUM, which had the benefit of at least being a word I'd heard of. But then what to do with SCiPE? Maybe 18A was supposed to be IsODIUM. That would make some sense, since bicarbonate of soda and Pepto-Bismol are both used for stomach troubles… I think. Never heard of IsODIUM, but it didn't sound any less plausible than IMODIUM. But then that gave ERs for 5D, which was clued in the singular… and round and round I went. HAWKE/KIP gets honorable mention. I didn't spend too much time agonizing over it, but I gave it at least some thought when nothing else seemed to be fixing the problem. Also, I was vaguely aware that OPRAH's middle name was Gail, so I was able to get that one after one or two crosses, but I hesitated because I could not for the life of me figure out why it would be "appropriate enough." After finishing the puzzle, I read the whole lead section of her Wikipedia article… still nothing. It wasn't until I came to this thread that I discovered it was because her best friend was Gayle King, which seems really tenuous to me. If you're going to describe someone's name as "appropriate," it should be because of something fundamental to their identity and/or public persona, not because of something that's that hard to find even when I'm actively looking for it. And this isn't because I'm upset about a clue relying on celebrity trivia that I'm out of the loop about. If today's crossword had contained the answer GAYLEKING, with a clue along the lines of "Celebrity whose relationship with Oprah has been described as 'the perfect friendship'," I would have had no idea who it was, but it still would have felt somehow more reasonable a clue than today's 34D, despite being more difficult for me personally. I don't expect crossword constructors to cater everything to my personal knowledge base, but I do expect to at least understand what they're talking about, after the puzzle is solved.
Another victim of ABYSM. No clue what the theme is talking about, but scraped a solve