I saw the clue for 1A and the highlighted boxes and my heart sank. Trenton – bravo, whew, and a huge thank you! All in all, one of those super-figuring-out solves that I call a CRACKEN. This was, from beginning to end, a multi-level, slow-to-open uncovering, leading to a grok-splosion. Then, after much face and brain scrunching, I got a big aha, seeing KEG, LEG, PEG, and BEG, but there was a nagging wondering, “Is that it? Is that the whole thing? Am I missing something? And why the “e.g.?” Then, finally, finally, the scales fell off my eyes and I fully saw the “e.g.”, and what was a growing irritation turned into an “oh”, followed by an “ooh”, then a “wow!”, then a “WOW!” I knew right from the start that the theme clues were letters spelled out, so the reveal didn’t tell me anything new. Then, finally, after filling the whole thing out, working to crack the theme. Just filling in the grid, with vague and devilish cluing combined with things I didn’t know, not to mention facing theme answers whose clues were opaque - that is, throwing guesses at the wall to see if they stick (some did, some didn’t), waiting for memory to retrieve bits lying in fallow, revisiting clues in hopes of a aha flash. Yesterday was a meander, today was a crawl. The rest, as I say, was just OK for me.Ī bit of a different experience than Rex had. The misdirection phrase is perfect, and the wordplay all seems exactly right (you 'bid' someone ADIEU when you 'close' the conversation with them. Embarrassed it took me as long as it did to get MARS (4D: Land of Opportunity?), CHASE (9D: Go after) (I had ENSUE!?), and ADIEU (62A: Closing bid?), which, weirdly, is probably my favorite clue in the puzzle. I think 'E' is the only good guess there, but still, crossing non-household names at vowel, not normally advised.

I couldn't be less interested in 'Dancing with the Stars' if I tried ( 64D: 'Dancing With the Stars' judge Goodman), and that's probably true of lots of NYTXW solvers, and then TANEY. That TANEY / LEN cross was potentially Natick territory for people. even PROKEDS and LESPAUL felt straight out of crossword central casting. Most of the other names were pretty crosswordesey, so I didn't have as much trouble. oh yeah, a Kavanaugh-supporting woman, super. No idea who DEB Fischer is ( 25A: Nebraska senator Fischer). Spelled LOUIE like that ( 15A: One whose charges are sarges). Wrote O'BRIEN before O'BRIAN (35D: Novelist Patrick who wrote 'Master and Commander'). I knew I'd seen it, but it was getting mixed up in my head with, I don't know, GNEISS, maybe? SCHUSS? Just couldn't find the handle (ironic, as the answer literally crosses '-HANDLE'). Blanked completely on GAUSS, even with -USS in place ( 53D: Magnetic induction unit). But, again, this is very much in keeping, quality-wise and excitement-wise, with the long history of NYTXW Thursdays that have come before it. Definitely contributed to a feeling of anticlimax. I see that there's a '?' on all the themers, so maybe that's the 'we left a step off' indicator today, and it's not too hard to figure out what you had to do to make the clues work, but something about sound / speaking being left out of the explanation made it seem inadequate. The clues are only SPELLED OUT if you *sound* them out. Something about the revealer seems off to me. And then I got PANHANDLE without really thinking about the clue (crosses took care of things). By that point I had most of three themers filled in.

I reasoned backward to and then saw what was going on with all the theme clues. I could see that the clue words sounded like letters very early on, but I didn't put it all together until. I definitely had an 'aha' moment at some point, though I don't remember when it came. The whole set-up has a very familiar, very traditional 'punny' vibe to it. Gotta do some word / letter-play to reimagine the clue, and then it's just straightforward from there. This is a perfectly acceptable Thursday puzzle that left me perfectly cold. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Taney served as the United States Attorney General and United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Andrew Jackson. Sandford (1857), ruling that African-Americans could not be considered citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories of the United States. He delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Roger Brooke Taney ( / ˈ t ɔː n i/ Ma– October 12, 1864) was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. Word of the Day: Roger TANEY ( 66A: Roger _, second-longest-serving chief justice of the Supreme Court). or what four of this puzzle's clues are?) - if you *sound* out the the clue, it spells a word. THEME: SPELLED OUT (63A: Explained in great detail.

Paradise lost figure crossword clue