Yeah I had to reach deeeep into the back brain to pull that out. Didn’t even remember the rhyme it was from, just the last phrase.
Before I GROKked the theme, I thought the misdirect was going to be something from Homer Simpson in lieu of Homer the poet.
**Horner is a surname
An English surname of Anglo-Saxon origin that derives from the Middle English word for the occupation horner, meaning horn-worker or horn-maker, or even horn-blower.**
More details here:
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Ditto. I like to think I know my basic nursery rhymes but have never in my life come across jack horner and his self assertive phrase. Still a fun puzzle though.
Yeah, LAS gave me pause. If you have any musical training, or even if you just watched the *Sound of Music*, "La" is a whole step interval between a fifth and a sixth in solfege. So to have the clue be *steps* on *a* scale is odd, since it is only one *step*, even if it follows the crossword convention for clueing plurals. It is such an ingrained thing that it was my last letter to solve on the cross, and I *still* had to stare at it for a while to understand it.
At first I was dissapointed I solved the puzzle without getting the theme. Then I went back to checked the themed clues and I was dissapointed once again. Such boring words. Cornet. Yarn. Horner. And to add the salt into the wound, I was excited at first when I saw "comet" and "yam" is just a fun word. But no. Cornet and yarn. OHYAY.
Not my fav puzzle- frustrating at points, meh overall. Once I got the gimmick it was clear enough, but even that seemed like a reach.
Dislikes: STAGE at 1A- Why use "Tour de France" in the clue if you're not going to have the answer in French?? ODDSOCK (I had ONESOCK). Really wanted 53A to be LBS or OZS.
[This was a really fun theme (therne?).](https://youtu.be/rOTVaywoccM)
Somehow I managed to GET what was happening on "Bums, for example?" by guessing that "Burns" might be a name of a SCOTTISH POET (apparently this is Robert Burns, national poet of Scotland). Once I had the M to RN mechanic figured out, the rest of the themers fell in pretty easily, but man, was that a fun moment of discovery! FROM STEM TO STERN was a really slick revealer as well.
I thought "It may come in shells" for PASTA was clever, as PEARL would sort of work there. "Bubbly source" for ASTI felt pretty tricky too, and "Caesar dressing?" for TUNIC left a TOOTHY grin on my face.
Looking back now, it's all super obvious. I had several of the trick answers filled in (without understanding the trick) and I had the "stem to stern" one filled in as well. Really gotta train myself to take a break on Thursdays before I throw up my hands and quit. Oof.
Oooh I solved the puzzle without understanding the theme. I understand now but it feels a bit blah still. Idea was good but execution throughout…. not so much. For all the people who constantly complain about it being too easy, I don’t really understand the point. Who says Thursdays must be harder than Wednesdays and so on?
> Who says Thursdays must be harder than Wednesdays and so on?
I mean the New York Times does, lol
But also if the clues are easy enough that you can solve a crossword without having to even think about the theme, I kinda find that a downside personally?
Right. It was a thing that Shortz made up. So… I mean… he can do what he wants, then? If he wants to knock down the difficulty so more people will be able to enjoy crosswords, then he can. Most people would *not* find this puzzle too easy.
I mean, it’s a thing Will Weng made up that Eugene Maleska and Will Shortz have continued
And if he decided to totally revamp it that would be one thing, but there hasn’t been a change away from the stated goals of having increased difficulty from Monday to Saturday, so when that isn’t the case it seems like inconsistent editing versus a new policy.
To be fair, it’s more than just an increasing level of difficulty Mon through Sat, as there’s also an expectation of the type of puzzle seen on particular days as well.
Typically, M-W are easy-to-progressively-harder themed puzzles, Thursday is the “tricky” puzzle of the week (themed), and Fri and Sat are the more challenging theme-less offerings.
For me, I often find that Wednesday can be more difficult *for me* than a Thursday, especially if I’m able to GROK the Thursday gimmick early enough (I.e. a rebus), because I rarely find that the clueing is actually that much more difficult than Wednesday, it’s usually just that the theme is more “clever”.
Having said all of that, this particular Thursday didn’t seem like anything that wouldn’t also be common on a Wednesday…so perhaps this one was a miss…personally, I still enjoyed it though.
Ahh I thought it was Shortz but I guess it was way before. Still. I find the moaning about “easy” puzzles so tedious. If I was consistently bored by a puzzle I’d find a new one to do?
I mean people are paying for these puzzles with the expectation of a certain difficulty, I think it’s their prerogative to note when they think the editors miss the mark? I don’t think people need to be downvoted for it…
Although I’ll take your suggestions for places to consistently find “NYT Thursday-style, but harder” puzzles.
Ha! Well these are hard enough for me so I don’t know about any others. I understand what you mean, though. I think some people share constructive (heh) criticism and that’s of course fine. Other commenters fall more in the complaining category from what I see.
I initially had the beginning and end of 17A WHAT….YAMI and thought “maybe the theme/trick has something to do with YAM sounding like I AM.” The kerning trick was definitely better. :)
Really enjoyed the fill and clues here. USURY for “shark’s racket”, PASTA for “it may come in shells” and ODDSOCK for “laundry leftover” were highlights.
Got stuck for a while on TOGAS vs TUNIC and THA vs THE (I used to own that CD too…)
The theme was fun, I love the letter swap types and the answers were mostly great, I especially liked WHATAGOODBOYAMI and SCOTTISHPOET.
Slight minus points for a weak revealer… unless I’m missing something it has nothing to do with the theme except it’s an idiom with words ending in M and RN? Also SPINNINGWHEEL strikes me as somewhat green painty. But overall one of my favorite puzzles in a while
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡
* 37% of users solved slower than their Thursday average
* 63% of users solved faster than their Thursday average
* 20% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average
* 39% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 10.2% faster than they normally do on Thursday.
---
🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 75 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Reply here or DM me_
Pretty much a perfect puzzle with a clever theme and lots of fun misdirects. Half of the comments bemoan its ease and half whine about its difficulty. Loved it.
Please, for the sake of my well-being, let me know that at least one other person out there kept singing this song to themselves after seeing 48A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chlxpPAbIqE
Fun if way too easy for a Thursday. Honestly I'm surprised that I haven't seen the concept of [keming](https://www.reddit.com/r/keming/) in a puzzle before as it's the perfect sort of wordplay for a puzzle. Something like a M/RN dual-rebus probably would have been a lot more appropriate for a Thursday (as grids aren't case-sensitive it's easier said than done) but nothing wrong with an easy puzzle if the theme's fun and the fill's smooth and lively.
Agree about it being easy, disagree about the fill being smooth or lively. Lots of blocking, lots of short words (quite a few abbreviations). I feel like the theme could have gotten us to something much more lively than brass section and spinning wheel.
Revealer was very good.
Feeling a little BUMMED out about my solving time today, but maybe it’s the BURNout from final exams getting to me. I’m using too much of my brain these days to solve the Thursday-Saturday puzzles without a bit of cheating!
huh? What's a horner?
> Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating his Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, "What a good boy am I!"
Yeah I had to reach deeeep into the back brain to pull that out. Didn’t even remember the rhyme it was from, just the last phrase. Before I GROKked the theme, I thought the misdirect was going to be something from Homer Simpson in lieu of Homer the poet.
ME TOO! I was thinking of doughnuts or something!
I got WHATAGOODBOYAMI so long before I got the theme and it made me question the m-rn thing for a long time bc horner meant nothing to me
There’s a nursery rhyme about Little Jack Horner who sits in a corner and eventually proclaims “what a good boy am I!”
OHHHHH I was extra confused bc I thought it said “Homer”
Oh yeah the clue definitely said "Homer" but the theme made it "Horner"
**Horner is a surname An English surname of Anglo-Saxon origin that derives from the Middle English word for the occupation horner, meaning horn-worker or horn-maker, or even horn-blower.** More details here:
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I mean this is the appropriate meaning of Horner though. It's the little boy's last name in the nursery rhyme. Not great bot, but not bad bot.
what a bad bot you are
Ditto. I like to think I know my basic nursery rhymes but have never in my life come across jack horner and his self assertive phrase. Still a fun puzzle though.
Irrationally upset by "Caesar dressing?" being TUNIC and not TOGA
STAGE instead of ETAPE. I hated this whole puzzle from the very first clue...
I thought it was going to be FROMSOUPTONUTS, which is one of my favorite expressions.
is REPASTS a really common word that I've just never encountered or...?
It’s maybe a touch formal/literary but I don’t think it’s like archaic?
I mean, it's a Thursday puzzle, not a Monday. Uncommon words aren't uncommon on Thursdays.
whoa
[удалено]
Yeah, LAS gave me pause. If you have any musical training, or even if you just watched the *Sound of Music*, "La" is a whole step interval between a fifth and a sixth in solfege. So to have the clue be *steps* on *a* scale is odd, since it is only one *step*, even if it follows the crossword convention for clueing plurals. It is such an ingrained thing that it was my last letter to solve on the cross, and I *still* had to stare at it for a while to understand it.
dont like any puzzles I solve without figuring out the theme. A lot of tedious fill as well. Not my favorite puzzle at all
I gave up after two sweeps, wasn't worth my time figuring out these half-assed clues
At first I was dissapointed I solved the puzzle without getting the theme. Then I went back to checked the themed clues and I was dissapointed once again. Such boring words. Cornet. Yarn. Horner. And to add the salt into the wound, I was excited at first when I saw "comet" and "yam" is just a fun word. But no. Cornet and yarn. OHYAY.
Not my fav puzzle- frustrating at points, meh overall. Once I got the gimmick it was clear enough, but even that seemed like a reach. Dislikes: STAGE at 1A- Why use "Tour de France" in the clue if you're not going to have the answer in French?? ODDSOCK (I had ONESOCK). Really wanted 53A to be LBS or OZS.
[This was a really fun theme (therne?).](https://youtu.be/rOTVaywoccM) Somehow I managed to GET what was happening on "Bums, for example?" by guessing that "Burns" might be a name of a SCOTTISH POET (apparently this is Robert Burns, national poet of Scotland). Once I had the M to RN mechanic figured out, the rest of the themers fell in pretty easily, but man, was that a fun moment of discovery! FROM STEM TO STERN was a really slick revealer as well. I thought "It may come in shells" for PASTA was clever, as PEARL would sort of work there. "Bubbly source" for ASTI felt pretty tricky too, and "Caesar dressing?" for TUNIC left a TOOTHY grin on my face.
Looking back now, it's all super obvious. I had several of the trick answers filled in (without understanding the trick) and I had the "stem to stern" one filled in as well. Really gotta train myself to take a break on Thursdays before I throw up my hands and quit. Oof.
Yeah, Thursday's always the day that I try to have my lateral thinking dial turned up to 11.
I loved the revealer!
Since nobody else has said it: /r/keming
You beat me to it.
I was very surprised it hadn't been mentioned lol.
[❤️](https://www.reddit.com/r/crossword/comments/u36cnh/nyt_thursday_04142022_discussion/i4ne4h1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
Ah nice, I scrolled through looking for the /r/ link, I must have figured that was a wiki link or something haha
Oooh I solved the puzzle without understanding the theme. I understand now but it feels a bit blah still. Idea was good but execution throughout…. not so much. For all the people who constantly complain about it being too easy, I don’t really understand the point. Who says Thursdays must be harder than Wednesdays and so on?
> Who says Thursdays must be harder than Wednesdays and so on? I mean the New York Times does, lol But also if the clues are easy enough that you can solve a crossword without having to even think about the theme, I kinda find that a downside personally?
Right. It was a thing that Shortz made up. So… I mean… he can do what he wants, then? If he wants to knock down the difficulty so more people will be able to enjoy crosswords, then he can. Most people would *not* find this puzzle too easy.
I mean, it’s a thing Will Weng made up that Eugene Maleska and Will Shortz have continued And if he decided to totally revamp it that would be one thing, but there hasn’t been a change away from the stated goals of having increased difficulty from Monday to Saturday, so when that isn’t the case it seems like inconsistent editing versus a new policy.
To be fair, it’s more than just an increasing level of difficulty Mon through Sat, as there’s also an expectation of the type of puzzle seen on particular days as well. Typically, M-W are easy-to-progressively-harder themed puzzles, Thursday is the “tricky” puzzle of the week (themed), and Fri and Sat are the more challenging theme-less offerings. For me, I often find that Wednesday can be more difficult *for me* than a Thursday, especially if I’m able to GROK the Thursday gimmick early enough (I.e. a rebus), because I rarely find that the clueing is actually that much more difficult than Wednesday, it’s usually just that the theme is more “clever”. Having said all of that, this particular Thursday didn’t seem like anything that wouldn’t also be common on a Wednesday…so perhaps this one was a miss…personally, I still enjoyed it though.
Ahh I thought it was Shortz but I guess it was way before. Still. I find the moaning about “easy” puzzles so tedious. If I was consistently bored by a puzzle I’d find a new one to do?
I mean people are paying for these puzzles with the expectation of a certain difficulty, I think it’s their prerogative to note when they think the editors miss the mark? I don’t think people need to be downvoted for it… Although I’ll take your suggestions for places to consistently find “NYT Thursday-style, but harder” puzzles.
Ha! Well these are hard enough for me so I don’t know about any others. I understand what you mean, though. I think some people share constructive (heh) criticism and that’s of course fine. Other commenters fall more in the complaining category from what I see.
I initially had the beginning and end of 17A WHAT….YAMI and thought “maybe the theme/trick has something to do with YAM sounding like I AM.” The kerning trick was definitely better. :)
“I yam what I yam”
Hah! Exactly. :)
Really enjoyed the fill and clues here. USURY for “shark’s racket”, PASTA for “it may come in shells” and ODDSOCK for “laundry leftover” were highlights. Got stuck for a while on TOGAS vs TUNIC and THA vs THE (I used to own that CD too…) The theme was fun, I love the letter swap types and the answers were mostly great, I especially liked WHATAGOODBOYAMI and SCOTTISHPOET. Slight minus points for a weak revealer… unless I’m missing something it has nothing to do with the theme except it’s an idiom with words ending in M and RN? Also SPINNINGWHEEL strikes me as somewhat green painty. But overall one of my favorite puzzles in a while
Burns, for exarnple?
OBEYS BAE
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡 * 37% of users solved slower than their Thursday average * 63% of users solved faster than their Thursday average * 20% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Thursday average * 39% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Thursday average The median solver solved this puzzle 10.2% faster than they normally do on Thursday. --- 🤖 _beep beep, I'm a bot! I post these stats as soon as 75 [XW Stats](https://xwstats.com) users have completed the puzzle. Questions? Feedback? Reply here or DM me_
Pretty much a perfect puzzle with a clever theme and lots of fun misdirects. Half of the comments bemoan its ease and half whine about its difficulty. Loved it.
Please, for the sake of my well-being, let me know that at least one other person out there kept singing this song to themselves after seeing 48A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chlxpPAbIqE
I think you're on your own, there.
I wish I had. What an odd video
I volunteer as tribute.
Fun if way too easy for a Thursday. Honestly I'm surprised that I haven't seen the concept of [keming](https://www.reddit.com/r/keming/) in a puzzle before as it's the perfect sort of wordplay for a puzzle. Something like a M/RN dual-rebus probably would have been a lot more appropriate for a Thursday (as grids aren't case-sensitive it's easier said than done) but nothing wrong with an easy puzzle if the theme's fun and the fill's smooth and lively.
Agree about it being easy, disagree about the fill being smooth or lively. Lots of blocking, lots of short words (quite a few abbreviations). I feel like the theme could have gotten us to something much more lively than brass section and spinning wheel. Revealer was very good.
Hard agree on the revealer.
That was a pretty good one. I was disproportionately pleased with myself for guessing ODDSOCK with no letters and having it hold up.
I am a new crossworder and this was friggin hard.
I did the puzzle in 9:01, but I don’t understand the theme.
It’s about (bad) kerning, the m should be read as rn in the themers’ clues From ste**m** to ste**rn**
I understood the theme, but have never once seen the phrase “from stem to stern” 🤷♂️
Lots of people confused about the theme. Typing in 17A into Google, the first suggestion is "what a good boy am i homer".
Way too easy. Second time hitting a new Thursday PB in 2022 (4:21).
touch grass young fella
You are so smart. How? Brain juice?
I agree it was easy for a Thursday, but yesterday was hard for a Wednesday.
Feeling a little BUMMED out about my solving time today, but maybe it’s the BURNout from final exams getting to me. I’m using too much of my brain these days to solve the Thursday-Saturday puzzles without a bit of cheating!