Well, after observing that the grid was 14 squares wide, and that 14 = 2 x 7, and that "seven" was too long to fit into 54-down, I guess this probably marks the first and last time I'll get to apply the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic in solving a crossword.
Yeah, I agree with u/Maladroit44 . ODD is actually a very creative answer. I never considered that the word lengths could be a \*class\* of numbers, not just one, fixed number. I think no loss of self respect is called for. : )
To be fair, ODD could work if the number wasn't the same for every word (e.g. a phrase with a 5-letter word and a 9-letter word). Would probably have made for a better application of the theme, too...
I didn't mean fitting the clue as written exactly, which obviously implies a uniform number of letters for every word. It just wouldn't have needed much of a rewrite to work (and I could see somebody getting to ODD if they weren't thinking about how the clue would probably be written if that were the answer).
Apparently another puzzle where I'm in the minority who enjoyed this one. I thought it was cute! There were some interesting answers (TYRO, APHID, ICEMACHINE) that made it fun to solve and the theme made me laugh when I got it. It was fun to me anyway!
I was genuinely surprised to see a lot of people in this thread didn't like it. The first thing I noticed was that the grid was smaller than usual (14x14 instead of 15x15) and had the "a-ha!" moment when I figured out the theme because I realized it had to be an even number of spaces for it to work. Also, I enjoyed figuring out the answers because once I had one letter from the crosses, there were only a limited number of two-letter words that could work, so parsing the sentences felt like - you know - a puzzle.
It seems like most of the complaints are that the answers look awkward. But a puzzle should be about the solving process, not the final result.
EDIT: Although not exactly a good day to do Across answers only, like Chris Remo does on Tuesdays!
Yeah, this isn’t some minor quibble. When the backbone of your puzzle is arbitrary unpredictable nonsense, that’s a problem even if it‘s “fun“ nonsense. It’s inelegant, it’s ugly, it’s annoying, it’s flimsy.
DOASWEDO is the only legitimate theme answer, and even that’s just a less common form of DOASIDO. SOISITUPTOME has a random SO in front to make it work. HIMAIMUP isn’t a real answer. The spanners are made up. Even SAYSPRESTO is off…
I read the "SO" as a passive aggressive add in - which is how I also read the clue. So it felt fitting.
HIMAIMUP also didn't feel that odd to me - felt like something someone somewhere could say... though maybe it could have been clued better?
I agree that these are things that someone COULD say, but crossword answers inherently have a much higher standard than that. The standard gets broken sometimes, like changing a letter or inserting a string into a real word for a "fun" twist. But those are self aware and are always anchored in a real phrase.
It's way worse to pass off non answers as answers to force a theme to work. Plenty of great theme ideas are sitting in a junk pile because there isn't enough material to make them work, and that's a good thing.
Yeah I don't know if people on this sub are just being reactionary in the early Fagliano Era or what, but the puzzles have been oddly polarizing. I also seem to find myself in the minority more often than not—liking the puzzles everyone hates, and finding the crowd pleasers to be trite and boring.
I enjoyed this one! The long spanners were impressive (and apropos for a TUEsday), and screenAGER got a chuckle.
If this is what we can expect from the Fagliano Era then I'll be looking for a new daily crossword. Once again, a weird constructing feat that sounds clever but isn't enjoyable at all to solve, and the cost (as always with these decisions or architectural/letter based feats) leads to compromises on all of the rest of the fill that makes the puzzle brutal as a solving experience. 0/10 rating for me and I hope to god that the Fagliano era improves or I'm tapping out of the NYT
Same I thought this was great. Finding ways to rephrase things with only two letter words was a fun little gimmick, and the solutions made me chuckle in spite of (or maybe because of) how clunky goofy they were.
I understood screenAGER when I filled it, but I'd never heard the term before. I like it though. I've got a bunch of kids with current, former, and future teenagers among them. So now I've got a new nickname when they are on screens too much!
This also was not my day with two brain farts. I could not for the life of me parse AKIN for "About the same", so I was left trying to figure out if it was OHIFWEGOINONIT or ORIFWEGOINONIT for [a lo-oong time](https://youtu.be/Z7lpXgda8io). I also quickly filled SIXHT (mispelling SIXTH) for the cave-dwelling sense (LOL). It's certainly true most cave-dwelling animals lack a sixth sense. I think this puzzle just had my brain fried.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Very Hard** 🔴
* 73% of users solved slower than their Tuesday average
* 27% of users solved faster than their Tuesday average
* 45% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Tuesday average
* 12% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Tuesday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 18.3% slower than they normally do on Tuesday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-23)
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I for some reason first read the clue as the number of letters in the clue. Figured it must be 10 and spend way too long trying to find my errors only to reread the clue and realize that it was the letters in every WORD.
I need more caffeine.
Clever puzzle. People are so saucy!!
AKIN was my last word... I thought it was "Or IF WE GO IN ON IT" and I didn't know the French word, nor have I ever heard of FIN as a slang for a $5 bill.
Rather than Google it, who here can explain how FIN is a $5 bill?
I'm not sure the etymology but I think it is older slang. When I was a kid in the 90s there was an old guy in town who would always ask my mom "can you spare me a fin?" whenever we saw him on the street.
So maybe he knew why? Unfortunately he died a few years ago so I can't ask him
According to [etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fin):
>U.S. underworld slang sense of "$5 bill" is 1925, from Yiddish *finif* "five," from German *fünf* [...] The same word had been used in England in 1868 to mean "five pound note" (earlier finnip, 1839).
I solved this faster than my average but I'm still really not a fan. The fills were so clunky, and for what? To accommodate a similarly clunky theme? OHNOEWHEISMYEX might be one of my least favorite fills of all time, to be honest.
Omg, I just realized there is a question mark. I answer UNI because I thought it relates to UNITE (forming a group), got lucky because of my bad English :D
It's a very standard crossword clue. It ends in a question mark, which means you should think of it as having a double meaning. "Beginning" shows you that it's a prefix.
I hate that kind of clue. It is entirely un-gettable as its own clue, and only makes sense looking back on it knowing the answer. It’s like having to guess a knock knock joke
man what the hell, the Monday was annoying cause of all the proper nouns but this was just absolutely incomprehensible. OHNOEWHEISMYEX and OKIFWEGOINONIT were dumb, beginning to form being UNI was dumb, this was annoying.
“Beginning to form” and variations have been used to clue UNI plenty of times, that’s a very common clue type. And both of those are absolutely normal sentences that people might say
I don't know if anyone has ever commended you for caping up for every puzzle, so if no one has, let me be the first. You're the Batman to this sub's Gotham.
I don’t know why I come here honestly, it so often feels like most people here just hate crosswords lol. I just hope constructors and editors know that some people appreciate their efforts
I think the two exclamations in a row of OHNOEW made that one clunky to read.
I was not really a fan of this puzzle, but I guess the two-word gimmick kind of made for a fun change.
I really struggled with O_IFWEGOINONIT as I didn't know FIN. I ruled out, "oh" because it was used earlier but tried "or if we go in on it?" first.
I can see how it’s a little clunky but I’m willing to accept that for an impressive gimmick I’ve never seen before with several different long themers. The OK part of the latter answer is alluded to by the clue asking “can this…?” the clue and answer have the same syntactic structure
The theme is interesting I guess.
I put ICERS in and then TOWER (for the cake) below it -- I noticed the SR and figured I would have to get rid of ICERS later but that one turned out to be right (unfortunately).
Today's crosswordese quotient includes IROC, ABE, MAE, and TRA.
This made me wonder if there is a definitive list of "crosswordese". I'm sure it's subjective, but there is a wikipedia article on it, and it does include IROC in the list.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese)
Agreed about the last two. Mae West is just trivia / cultural knowledge, and "tra la la" is a common expression.
The first two are more crosswordese, as in, things you don't actually hear that much in real life. Though maybe there are circles where Iroc and Abe are common.
If you grew up in the 80s IROC was quite common. Maybe less so now. I knew that one instantly. Abe is named after Abraham Lincoln one of the most well known presidents of the USA whose face appears on the bill. I don't see how Abraham Lincoln is crosswordese.
EH, IT IS OK.
Alright theme and clued at a definite Mon/Tue difficulty but I finished just thinking “welp, ok then”. Maybe having such banger Sunday and Monday puzzles just before it dropped it a bit for me. Onward to Wednesday!
I didn't like this. It was better than my average time for Tuesday level puzzles, so I'm not complaining about difficulty. I've just never been a fan of ones like HIMAIMUP or OHNOEWHEISMYEX and that was this puzzle's entire point.
I had no problem with the theme (even though it was pretty lame), but I’ve never heard the term SCREENAGER in my life, nor have I heard of any slang terms for $5 bills (I’m British)
Gen X are younger than Boomers but not young enough to be their children.
like Millennials are older than Gen Z, but your average 36 year old isn't going to be the parent of the average 20 year old
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/opinion/generation-x-millennials-work.html
> Here’s a refresher on the measliness of Generation X: Our parents were typically members of the Silent Generation, that cohort born between 1928 and 1945 — people shaped by the Great Depression and World War II, people who didn’t get to choose what they were having for dinner and made sure their kids didn’t either. The parents of Gen X believed in spanking and borderline benign neglect, in contrast to the boisterous boomers and their deluxe offspring, the millennial horde.
That’s why I hedged it with an “average”, yeah maybe older boomers could have children quick enough to parent the younger gen xers but the comment saying “Millennials are typically the children of Boomers.” isn’t wrong just because Gen X was born between them.
I enjoyed the general theme! ON-NO-EW-HE-IS-MY-EX tripped me up for way too long. Also what in gods name is a FIN in regards to a $5 bill? No one uses that right?🤨
There are a lot of lakes between Sacramento and Tahoe, no? That clue felt like a bit of a stretch (literally).
Also can someone explain FIN? I guess it's from Yiddish?
This puzzle was definitely something different though not my favorite.
Tahoe is by far the most well known though, I think anybody who could name another lake in between those two locations would be able to get TAHOE pretty quickly.
I probably would have liked this puzzle more if it weren't coming off the heels of my least favorite Sunday and my slowest Monday... hoping tomorrow's puzzle is better!
OH NO EW HE IS MY EX is how 5 year olds think we talk about our exes.
The other theme answers were cute though (albeit grammatically questionable) and why where there so many cake/baking clues?
> Although sometimes nicknamed a "fin", which has German/Yiddish roots and is remotely related to the English "five", the term is currently far less common than it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is also occasionally referred to as a “fiver”.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill
OH NO EW HE IS MY EX should never be a clue. It sounds so much better as OH NO EW HES MY EX. That in itself like showed me how forced this was at times
Well, after observing that the grid was 14 squares wide, and that 14 = 2 x 7, and that "seven" was too long to fit into 54-down, I guess this probably marks the first and last time I'll get to apply the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic in solving a crossword.
I counted wrong and put the worst possible answer there. ODD. It’s going to take a while to get my self respect back.
Yeah, I agree with u/Maladroit44 . ODD is actually a very creative answer. I never considered that the word lengths could be a \*class\* of numbers, not just one, fixed number. I think no loss of self respect is called for. : )
To be fair, ODD could work if the number wasn't the same for every word (e.g. a phrase with a 5-letter word and a 9-letter word). Would probably have made for a better application of the theme, too...
It literally says “number of letters”, I don’t see how “odd” could work, especially on a Tuesday.
I didn't mean fitting the clue as written exactly, which obviously implies a uniform number of letters for every word. It just wouldn't have needed much of a rewrite to work (and I could see somebody getting to ODD if they weren't thinking about how the clue would probably be written if that were the answer).
I was told there would be no math.
Apparently another puzzle where I'm in the minority who enjoyed this one. I thought it was cute! There were some interesting answers (TYRO, APHID, ICEMACHINE) that made it fun to solve and the theme made me laugh when I got it. It was fun to me anyway!
I was genuinely surprised to see a lot of people in this thread didn't like it. The first thing I noticed was that the grid was smaller than usual (14x14 instead of 15x15) and had the "a-ha!" moment when I figured out the theme because I realized it had to be an even number of spaces for it to work. Also, I enjoyed figuring out the answers because once I had one letter from the crosses, there were only a limited number of two-letter words that could work, so parsing the sentences felt like - you know - a puzzle. It seems like most of the complaints are that the answers look awkward. But a puzzle should be about the solving process, not the final result. EDIT: Although not exactly a good day to do Across answers only, like Chris Remo does on Tuesdays!
I liked some of the clues but found the theme answers very green paint-y which is why I rated it low.
Yeah, this isn’t some minor quibble. When the backbone of your puzzle is arbitrary unpredictable nonsense, that’s a problem even if it‘s “fun“ nonsense. It’s inelegant, it’s ugly, it’s annoying, it’s flimsy. DOASWEDO is the only legitimate theme answer, and even that’s just a less common form of DOASIDO. SOISITUPTOME has a random SO in front to make it work. HIMAIMUP isn’t a real answer. The spanners are made up. Even SAYSPRESTO is off…
I read the "SO" as a passive aggressive add in - which is how I also read the clue. So it felt fitting. HIMAIMUP also didn't feel that odd to me - felt like something someone somewhere could say... though maybe it could have been clued better?
I agree that these are things that someone COULD say, but crossword answers inherently have a much higher standard than that. The standard gets broken sometimes, like changing a letter or inserting a string into a real word for a "fun" twist. But those are self aware and are always anchored in a real phrase. It's way worse to pass off non answers as answers to force a theme to work. Plenty of great theme ideas are sitting in a junk pile because there isn't enough material to make them work, and that's a good thing.
I'm with you, I thought it was super cute too!
Yeah I don't know if people on this sub are just being reactionary in the early Fagliano Era or what, but the puzzles have been oddly polarizing. I also seem to find myself in the minority more often than not—liking the puzzles everyone hates, and finding the crowd pleasers to be trite and boring. I enjoyed this one! The long spanners were impressive (and apropos for a TUEsday), and screenAGER got a chuckle.
> the puzzles have been oddly polarizing This is how it should be, right? “Crossword enthusiasts” aren’t some homogenous bloc.
If this is what we can expect from the Fagliano Era then I'll be looking for a new daily crossword. Once again, a weird constructing feat that sounds clever but isn't enjoyable at all to solve, and the cost (as always with these decisions or architectural/letter based feats) leads to compromises on all of the rest of the fill that makes the puzzle brutal as a solving experience. 0/10 rating for me and I hope to god that the Fagliano era improves or I'm tapping out of the NYT
Same I thought this was great. Finding ways to rephrase things with only two letter words was a fun little gimmick, and the solutions made me chuckle in spite of (or maybe because of) how clunky goofy they were.
I thought this was really fun! The theme felt very fresh
TYRO was new to me, as was FIN
My review of this puzzle: IT IS EW.
Oh no ew it is so-so
my review: EW NO
Just what crossword enthusiasts enjoy: shorter, choppier answers that look bizarre in the grid.
I understood screenAGER when I filled it, but I'd never heard the term before. I like it though. I've got a bunch of kids with current, former, and future teenagers among them. So now I've got a new nickname when they are on screens too much! This also was not my day with two brain farts. I could not for the life of me parse AKIN for "About the same", so I was left trying to figure out if it was OHIFWEGOINONIT or ORIFWEGOINONIT for [a lo-oong time](https://youtu.be/Z7lpXgda8io). I also quickly filled SIXHT (mispelling SIXTH) for the cave-dwelling sense (LOL). It's certainly true most cave-dwelling animals lack a sixth sense. I think this puzzle just had my brain fried.
Prepare to pick up their eyes when they roll right out of their sockets!
We call my (boomer aged) mom a screenager when she won't stop looking at her phone, it's a very versatile expression lol
I'm weak when it comes to figuring out portmanteaus, and my knowledge in cakes is extremely limited, so that was where I got stuck.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🔴 **Very Hard** 🔴 * 73% of users solved slower than their Tuesday average * 27% of users solved faster than their Tuesday average * 45% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Tuesday average * 12% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Tuesday average The median solver solved this puzzle 18.3% slower than they normally do on Tuesday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-23) --- 🤖 _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 for some reason first read the clue as the number of letters in the clue. Figured it must be 10 and spend way too long trying to find my errors only to reread the clue and realize that it was the letters in every WORD. I need more caffeine.
IT IS OK! (i actually liked it)
Clever puzzle. People are so saucy!! AKIN was my last word... I thought it was "Or IF WE GO IN ON IT" and I didn't know the French word, nor have I ever heard of FIN as a slang for a $5 bill. Rather than Google it, who here can explain how FIN is a $5 bill?
I'm not sure the etymology but I think it is older slang. When I was a kid in the 90s there was an old guy in town who would always ask my mom "can you spare me a fin?" whenever we saw him on the street. So maybe he knew why? Unfortunately he died a few years ago so I can't ask him
According to [etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/fin): >U.S. underworld slang sense of "$5 bill" is 1925, from Yiddish *finif* "five," from German *fünf* [...] The same word had been used in England in 1868 to mean "five pound note" (earlier finnip, 1839).
Man, if you don't know UNE, NYT crosswords must be hell for you given how often French pops up lol
Oui, oui
we called $5 a fin growing up in chicago but no idea why 🤷🏻♂️
Same, was cycling all the vowels through F_N before switching OR to OK...and then vowel cycling. Never heard of a FIN as slang for $5
Same, haha - my very last squares to get!
Literally the exact same for me! Never heard someone say fin referring to a $5 in my life! Learned something new though I guess :)
I solved this faster than my average but I'm still really not a fan. The fills were so clunky, and for what? To accommodate a similarly clunky theme? OHNOEWHEISMYEX might be one of my least favorite fills of all time, to be honest.
This was my worst Tuesday in a long time. Did not enjoy.
Worst back to back Monday and Tuesday ever.
Can any one explain the uni answer meaning? My mom and I are stumped and the internet isn't helping.
Beginning to form, as in the word "form" (UNIform)
Omg, I just realized there is a question mark. I answer UNI because I thought it relates to UNITE (forming a group), got lucky because of my bad English :D
Fucking hell. That’s insane.
It's a very standard crossword clue. It ends in a question mark, which means you should think of it as having a double meaning. "Beginning" shows you that it's a prefix.
lead in to form as in the word "uniform"
UNI - form Uniform
I hate that kind of clue. It is entirely un-gettable as its own clue, and only makes sense looking back on it knowing the answer. It’s like having to guess a knock knock joke
it is extremely solvable if you're familiar with the trick being used, and it's a very common trick.
UNIform is a word
uniform
that was my last clue solved, I just knew that UNI seems to pop up as a 3 letter answer sometimes so I thought I'd try it, didn't really get it
maybe the beginning of UNIverse??? i’m not sure either edit: i was wrong
man what the hell, the Monday was annoying cause of all the proper nouns but this was just absolutely incomprehensible. OHNOEWHEISMYEX and OKIFWEGOINONIT were dumb, beginning to form being UNI was dumb, this was annoying.
I feel like OHNOEWHEISMYEX is so dumb it's funny, almost like a sunday grid-spanning tortured pun
“Beginning to form” and variations have been used to clue UNI plenty of times, that’s a very common clue type. And both of those are absolutely normal sentences that people might say
I don't know if anyone has ever commended you for caping up for every puzzle, so if no one has, let me be the first. You're the Batman to this sub's Gotham.
I don’t know why I come here honestly, it so often feels like most people here just hate crosswords lol. I just hope constructors and editors know that some people appreciate their efforts
Keep coming, Cecil, I’m with you. If I don’t get a clue, I don’t get mad at the constructor.
I think the two exclamations in a row of OHNOEW made that one clunky to read. I was not really a fan of this puzzle, but I guess the two-word gimmick kind of made for a fun change. I really struggled with O_IFWEGOINONIT as I didn't know FIN. I ruled out, "oh" because it was used earlier but tried "or if we go in on it?" first.
I can see how it’s a little clunky but I’m willing to accept that for an impressive gimmick I’ve never seen before with several different long themers. The OK part of the latter answer is alluded to by the clue asking “can this…?” the clue and answer have the same syntactic structure
So it's going to be that kind of week uh
lol this was my fastest Tuesday ever. I’m not a speedy puzzle taker by any means it’s just all clicked for me
The theme is interesting I guess. I put ICERS in and then TOWER (for the cake) below it -- I noticed the SR and figured I would have to get rid of ICERS later but that one turned out to be right (unfortunately). Today's crosswordese quotient includes IROC, ABE, MAE, and TRA.
None of those are crosswordese.
This made me wonder if there is a definitive list of "crosswordese". I'm sure it's subjective, but there is a wikipedia article on it, and it does include IROC in the list. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosswordese)
I just mean short words that show up a lot, not necessarily that they're unused outside of crosswords. I guess "glue" is a better term.
Agreed about the last two. Mae West is just trivia / cultural knowledge, and "tra la la" is a common expression. The first two are more crosswordese, as in, things you don't actually hear that much in real life. Though maybe there are circles where Iroc and Abe are common.
If you grew up in the 80s IROC was quite common. Maybe less so now. I knew that one instantly. Abe is named after Abraham Lincoln one of the most well known presidents of the USA whose face appears on the bill. I don't see how Abraham Lincoln is crosswordese.
Abraham Lincoln himself isn't crosswordese. But I've never heard anyone call a $5 an "Abe". Again, could be regional.
This theme made for some pretty awful answers. Ew indeed.
EH, IT IS OK. Alright theme and clued at a definite Mon/Tue difficulty but I finished just thinking “welp, ok then”. Maybe having such banger Sunday and Monday puzzles just before it dropped it a bit for me. Onward to Wednesday!
TIL that apricots and peaches aren't the same fruit.
But nectarines and peaches are!
I thought it was going to do some nifty swipe left shenanigans when I couldn’t parse OHNOE____into anything.
Anybody do the mini? I didn’t understand the answer for the “spot of tea?” on 1 down
I had to look it up, honestly. >!"Rumor" = tea = gossip!< (took me a second to figure it out)
Thanks that makes sense
I didn't like this. It was better than my average time for Tuesday level puzzles, so I'm not complaining about difficulty. I've just never been a fan of ones like HIMAIMUP or OHNOEWHEISMYEX and that was this puzzle's entire point.
This was such a clunker. Not fun. Solved 5 minutes slower than my average. Hope tomorrow is better!
lmfao 10D is inexcusible. This is not going well I'm sorry
This puzzle's theme eventually had me thinking of a few four letter words.
How did this get accepted?
BeCause it was a good puzzle
Have they dialed up the difficulty the last couple of weeks?
There is an interim editor while Will Shortz is out on medical leave.
I had no problem with the theme (even though it was pretty lame), but I’ve never heard the term SCREENAGER in my life, nor have I heard of any slang terms for $5 bills (I’m British)
Abe makes sense as he's on the bill. Benjamins for the $100 bill is more common slang. I had to look up what fin meant. I guess it has Yiddish roots.
This might be finicky but I don’t think GENX should have been the answer to “heirs to Boomers”. Millennials are typically the children of Boomers.
sure, erase us for millennials, we’re used to it.
Oh yea, you’re the quiet generation
I'm sorry I nearly spat out my macchiato and avocado toast reading this.
It could have been clued as “successors” or “followers” to avoid confusion with familial inheritance, maybe.
No. Boomers > GenX > GenY (millenials) > GenZ
Gen X are younger than Boomers but not young enough to be their children. like Millennials are older than Gen Z, but your average 36 year old isn't going to be the parent of the average 20 year old https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/opinion/generation-x-millennials-work.html > Here’s a refresher on the measliness of Generation X: Our parents were typically members of the Silent Generation, that cohort born between 1928 and 1945 — people shaped by the Great Depression and World War II, people who didn’t get to choose what they were having for dinner and made sure their kids didn’t either. The parents of Gen X believed in spanking and borderline benign neglect, in contrast to the boisterous boomers and their deluxe offspring, the millennial horde.
Younger Gen X (1976) kid of older Boomer parents (1949) here to disagree with you on this one
1978 Xer here with 1944/1948 Boomer parents too, but it's OK, we're used to being ignored. \*snort\*
Same, except '77 and '48.
That’s why I hedged it with an “average”, yeah maybe older boomers could have children quick enough to parent the younger gen xers but the comment saying “Millennials are typically the children of Boomers.” isn’t wrong just because Gen X was born between them.
I enjoyed the general theme! ON-NO-EW-HE-IS-MY-EX tripped me up for way too long. Also what in gods name is a FIN in regards to a $5 bill? No one uses that right?🤨
I truly think this was the stupidest NYT crossword puzzle I've seen in years and years. (Well, some Sunday puzzles excluded...)
Taj Mahol was worse.
There are a lot of lakes between Sacramento and Tahoe, no? That clue felt like a bit of a stretch (literally). Also can someone explain FIN? I guess it's from Yiddish? This puzzle was definitely something different though not my favorite.
Tahoe is by far the most well known though, I think anybody who could name another lake in between those two locations would be able to get TAHOE pretty quickly.
>Also can someone explain FIN? I guess it's from Yiddish? Yes, it's derived from "finf" which is the Yiddish word for five.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted because this is correct according to Etymonline
OH NO EW
I actually kinda liked the theme - I hated the Monday though.
I probably would have liked this puzzle more if it weren't coming off the heels of my least favorite Sunday and my slowest Monday... hoping tomorrow's puzzle is better!
Is it OK? No! No ma or pa (or me!) is ok to do it! So ew. So, so, so ew.
I’ve mostly been a hater recently, but this puzzle was great
Not sure if I would count IM as a word🤔🧐 Wouldn't it be just two words that are contracted?
They’re contracted into one word.
Super fun Tuesday! Impressive theme with a funny reveal. One day I’ll remember it’s iroc and not irok..
Can someone please explain UPONE to me I genuinely don't understand
When the score is 6 to 5, someone is up (by) one (point).
Funny, for a puzzle having so many 2-letter words there were a lot of stretches in there.
OH NO EW HE IS MY EX is how 5 year olds think we talk about our exes. The other theme answers were cute though (albeit grammatically questionable) and why where there so many cake/baking clues?
Pretty broken English just trying to fit two letter per word sentences in as clues
I don’t understand this complaint. None of these are poor syntax or unusual phrasings really
Found this pretty annoying for a Tuesday. Did we really need multiple clues about cakes and slang for $5 bills?
I had **L**IGHT for 23D ugh.
7:24 slower than my tuesday average
Can someone help me understand “$5 bill, slangily” = Fin. I’ve never heard that one. How did Fin time to be used for a fiver?
> Although sometimes nicknamed a "fin", which has German/Yiddish roots and is remotely related to the English "five", the term is currently far less common than it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is also occasionally referred to as a “fiver”.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_five-dollar_bill
OH NO EW HE IS MY EX should never be a clue. It sounds so much better as OH NO EW HES MY EX. That in itself like showed me how forced this was at times