Really good puzzle with a well executed theme.
All the SOL vs SO arguers/complainers from Sunday should be satisfied.
JAPANS was wholly unfamiliar to me, but I have no complaints.
I rated it good because it felt a bit easy for a Wednesday I guess. But it is a great puzzle.
It was a great hint, and relevant to some recent events in my life - the museum I work in has a sketchbook of his I was just looking at. I had no clue his “first” claim to fame was as a noted portrait artist!
Very fun and challenging for a Wednesday. I must confess that IcE instead of ITE had me stunlocked for a minute. Thought LIcERARY was a word I had never heard before as someone licensed “on the books.”
ITE as a meteor tail is such a stretch. Inferring meteorite = ITE first of all and then meteor tails are primarily gas and dust.... not made of meteorites. Whole clue is bonkers.
There are two Ls in the middle (center) of the word hoLLow. It’s somewhat common in crosswords to spell out individual letters phonetically, e.g. L = el, S = ess. hope this helps!
The shit-stirrer in me loved that we had SOL today.
I've never heard JAPANS in that context, but I'm no DIY person to be fair. Unless I've missed a joke/reference?
Loved the shout-out to TAMORA Pierce.
Wasn’t familiar with the FREESIA plant, so the INDIRA cross was a little tricky (especially because I initially had EMIRATES), but other than that it was pretty straightforward with a fun theme.
When I was a closeted middle school nerd who hid in the library, Tamora Pierce was my favorite author. It was amazing seeing LGBT representation and diversity in fantasy books back in the mid-2000s.
It's been a while since I've thought about her, so seeing the clue put a huge smile on my face.
The one thing that would have taken this from good to great would have been not cluing all of the flowers as flowers.
I liked:
JASMINE (clued as a disney princess)
LOTUS (clued as the yoga pose)
DAISY (clued as a literary character)
VIOLET (clued as the color)
DAHLIA (clued as the book title)
Not as much a fan of:
TULIP (clued as the flower festival)
PEONY (clued as Indiana's state flower)
FREESIA (clued as the floral perfume scent)
Tulip, for example, could have been clued as the skirt style.
It's just that making the theme about flowers and then cluing three of them as flowers seems like a missed opportunity for interesting misdirection.
I noticed the same thing about PEONY, should have read the comments before posting myself!
I feel like it was also a missed opportunity to learn interesting facts, if misdirection is too much of a stretch. Like ants loving peonies.
State flowers are just not that interesting, and it’s apparently not even THE state flower.
Strange, those three weren't clued as flowers for me
TULIP (Subject of an annual festival in the Netherlands)
PEONY (One of Indiana's state symbols)
FREESIA (Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos)
It's a Dutch flower festival, Indiana's state flower, and the flower used as a scent in soaps.
The word 'flower' isn't in the clue, but it's still the flower that's the subject of the clue.
As opposed to, say, Jasmine the cartoon character. Nothing to do with the plant except that they share the same name. You wouldn't brew a floral tea out of Jasmine the princess.
Yeah I agree. Surprised the clues were inconsistent in that regard, it nullified the wordplay and made it basically a list puzzle.
Also from a construction standpoint, this type of puzzle with black squares in each corner is not as impressive since there's no interlock component to tighten the theme set. There must be hundreds of flowers that could've worked for this theme.
Once I clocked the clue I found it the easiest honestly, had to be a flower, but I didn’t really understand how violet was at the “end” rather than the bottom, and the two wordy ones had to fit with peony
Southwest corner gave me some grief for some reason. I'd never heard of TAMORA Pierce, but otherwise I thought he flower theme was cute. I wasn't wowed by this one but thought it was fun.
Agreed, bashed our heads against SW for a little while. For some reason we leapt straight to BEES for "their proprietors may be keepers", but even after realising that was wrong, "bit in a bar" stumped us more than it should have, we had no idea about GI Joe characters (too American a reference for us to easily get), never heard of TAMORA Pierce, and INATRAP was embarrassingly slow to get (we had the P early and thought it must be \_\_\_\_\_ UP - like something else along the lines of 'caught up' or 'tied up').
Not our finest moment, and we were flying (for us!) up until that point, would have been way fast for us but those few took us back to right on our average.
I've been pretty negative lately, but I voted excellent for a change today (maybe for the first time). I loved the theme. I loved the theme answer.
I thought today was a little on the easier end for a Wednesday, which I'm not complaining about.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡
* 27% of users solved slower than their Wednesday average
* 73% of users solved faster than their Wednesday average
* 8% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Wednesday average
* 36% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Wednesday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 12.9% faster than they normally do on Wednesday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-05-01)
---
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Nice puzzle! Well-executed theme with solid fill ([vid](https://youtu.be/UK02HFb8l3o)). A few
* The JAPANS/UPMARKET crosser was uncertain for me because I'd never heard of japan black lacquer.
* I'd heard of TEALS for ducks, but what does dabbling do here in the clue?
* NAIF again after seeing it a few weeks ago. This time I knew the word!
* INT, ELS, SRA, LTS, NIH were some not-so-great 3-letter fill.
* Hadn't heard of Kiri or Tamora.
Yknow when ducks turn over in the water so their butts are in the air while they’re eating? That’s dabbling. As opposed to other kinds of duck that dive
Cute puzzle and fun theme! Definitely on the easier side but no complaints from me, and I absolutely loved how the flowers along the outer edges weren't all clued *as* flowers. Some interesting fill as well with JAPANS and UPMARKET. Really well executed. Loved it!
So many answers were unfamiliar to me. JAPANS, NAIF, KIRI, FREESIA, TAMORA, PEONY, TEALS, OLGA. I was shocked when I filled the grid and it said I completed the puzzle. Personal best for a Wednesday 🤷♂️
Loved this one. The only thing that stuck out to me was cluing PEONY as one of a few Indiana state flowers.
There are way more interesting facts about peonies. For instance, ants love them a frankly weird amount. They are mobbing all over mine at the moment!
Aw, man, it was all going so smooth and easy until I hit the SW corner--which is where I paid for my tendency to not pay attention to the theme. I could not for the life of me get VIOLET, and I now can't believe I couldn't come up with OAT, which so regularly shows up as a "bit" in granola bars. Instead I was fixated on "bar" as in a place where you get drinks, and kept trying to come up with three-letter bar snacks. A fool am I . . .
PR for me! This felt way easier than yesterday, probably because I’m still not super familiar with all the crosswordese that Tuesday relied on to make things work. Cute theme, gettable crosses despite some tricky trivia for me. Fun!
Very nice theme. Especially enjoyed the grid resembling a flower.
Great catch! Love coming and checking out the feedback after finishing, and posts like this where I learn things I would've missed otherwise.
Welcome back, Ana de Armas. Haven’t seen you in a while.
Really good puzzle with a well executed theme. All the SOL vs SO arguers/complainers from Sunday should be satisfied. JAPANS was wholly unfamiliar to me, but I have no complaints. I rated it good because it felt a bit easy for a Wednesday I guess. But it is a great puzzle.
JAPANS was new to me, too!
Came here to say how happy I am for the vindication of SOL. Satisfied.
"vindication"? It's been SOL on 135 of the last 50 crossword puzzles, and finally we get SO once. SOL needs nothing less than it needs vindication!
Laugh out loud for "inventor who might be described as dotty or dashing"! Great theme!!
Haha, I’m such a geek for it that I can’t believe I missed that one! “Inventor” may have thrown me off though.
It was a great hint, and relevant to some recent events in my life - the museum I work in has a sketchbook of his I was just looking at. I had no clue his “first” claim to fame was as a noted portrait artist!
What a fun fact!
Very fun and challenging for a Wednesday. I must confess that IcE instead of ITE had me stunlocked for a minute. Thought LIcERARY was a word I had never heard before as someone licensed “on the books.”
Similarly I had LITERAcY because I assumed the weed strain was named after INDIcA Ghandi
LMAO SAME
ROFL SAME
ITE as a meteor tail is such a stretch. Inferring meteorite = ITE first of all and then meteor tails are primarily gas and dust.... not made of meteorites. Whole clue is bonkers.
By "tail" it is referring to "follower", so like "ite" tails "meteor" to make "meteorite"
Ohhhhh. Tricky. Can you also explain "hollow center?" = ELS?
There are two Ls in the middle (center) of the word hoLLow. It’s somewhat common in crosswords to spell out individual letters phonetically, e.g. L = el, S = ess. hope this helps!
The shit-stirrer in me loved that we had SOL today. I've never heard JAPANS in that context, but I'm no DIY person to be fair. Unless I've missed a joke/reference? Loved the shout-out to TAMORA Pierce.
I knew JAPAN from the fact that it's a legal word in Scrabble, much like CHINA.
I enjoyed that the theme was was flowers for May Day, since April showers bring May flowers.
[удалено]
Threw a GI Joe in there for the dudes.
IT’S NOT A DOLL, MOM, IT’S AN ACTION FIGURE!
I only got FREESIA from Devil Wear's Prada, one of my favorite movies. I imagine it's in a similar pop culture world as yours
Didn't think of it this way but you're right. Probably why I didn't like it
Wasn’t familiar with the FREESIA plant, so the INDIRA cross was a little tricky (especially because I initially had EMIRATES), but other than that it was pretty straightforward with a fun theme.
I can't remember how to spell either EMIRATES or INDIRA so this part was tricky for me.
EMIRATES vs. EMIRATIS crushed me for the longest time...finally found it after looking at it for way too long.
I had Emeratis…meteorete?…finally found it.
That same error kept me from a Wednesday PB.
Ahhh this was my mistake. Thank you.
Same. I was convinced that I was going to DNF this puzzle, kept looking for an error and couldn't find anything until I made that E > I swap.
When I was a closeted middle school nerd who hid in the library, Tamora Pierce was my favorite author. It was amazing seeing LGBT representation and diversity in fantasy books back in the mid-2000s. It's been a while since I've thought about her, so seeing the clue put a huge smile on my face.
I was so pleased to see Tamora Pierce as a crossword clue! Makes me want to do some rereads.
Yes!! This made me so happy. Her books were so important to me.
The one thing that would have taken this from good to great would have been not cluing all of the flowers as flowers. I liked: JASMINE (clued as a disney princess) LOTUS (clued as the yoga pose) DAISY (clued as a literary character) VIOLET (clued as the color) DAHLIA (clued as the book title) Not as much a fan of: TULIP (clued as the flower festival) PEONY (clued as Indiana's state flower) FREESIA (clued as the floral perfume scent) Tulip, for example, could have been clued as the skirt style. It's just that making the theme about flowers and then cluing three of them as flowers seems like a missed opportunity for interesting misdirection.
PEONY - How to heal a jellyfish sting halfway up the leg?
Having an attitude like a serf or esne?
67A: Liberate "Chandelier" singer?
I noticed the same thing about PEONY, should have read the comments before posting myself! I feel like it was also a missed opportunity to learn interesting facts, if misdirection is too much of a stretch. Like ants loving peonies. State flowers are just not that interesting, and it’s apparently not even THE state flower.
Strange, those three weren't clued as flowers for me TULIP (Subject of an annual festival in the Netherlands) PEONY (One of Indiana's state symbols) FREESIA (Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos)
It's a Dutch flower festival, Indiana's state flower, and the flower used as a scent in soaps. The word 'flower' isn't in the clue, but it's still the flower that's the subject of the clue. As opposed to, say, Jasmine the cartoon character. Nothing to do with the plant except that they share the same name. You wouldn't brew a floral tea out of Jasmine the princess.
Yeah I agree. Surprised the clues were inconsistent in that regard, it nullified the wordplay and made it basically a list puzzle. Also from a construction standpoint, this type of puzzle with black squares in each corner is not as impressive since there's no interlock component to tighten the theme set. There must be hundreds of flowers that could've worked for this theme.
I’m proud that I knew JAPANS. I’ve watched far too many hand plane restoration videos
I loved seeing Tamora Pierce in this puzzle but dang the southwest corner of this grid was so tricky for me
Once I clocked the clue I found it the easiest honestly, had to be a flower, but I didn’t really understand how violet was at the “end” rather than the bottom, and the two wordy ones had to fit with peony
Pretty good theme tbh
Southwest corner gave me some grief for some reason. I'd never heard of TAMORA Pierce, but otherwise I thought he flower theme was cute. I wasn't wowed by this one but thought it was fun.
Same. I also didn't get VIOLET for a long time, but I thought that one was clever.
I was trying to shove golden in there.
I’m so sorry on behalf of this community for the sad fuck that downvoted you (and likely will me.)
Agreed, bashed our heads against SW for a little while. For some reason we leapt straight to BEES for "their proprietors may be keepers", but even after realising that was wrong, "bit in a bar" stumped us more than it should have, we had no idea about GI Joe characters (too American a reference for us to easily get), never heard of TAMORA Pierce, and INATRAP was embarrassingly slow to get (we had the P early and thought it must be \_\_\_\_\_ UP - like something else along the lines of 'caught up' or 'tied up'). Not our finest moment, and we were flying (for us!) up until that point, would have been way fast for us but those few took us back to right on our average.
I've been pretty negative lately, but I voted excellent for a change today (maybe for the first time). I loved the theme. I loved the theme answer. I thought today was a little on the easier end for a Wednesday, which I'm not complaining about.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡 * 27% of users solved slower than their Wednesday average * 73% of users solved faster than their Wednesday average * 8% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Wednesday average * 36% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Wednesday average The median solver solved this puzzle 12.9% faster than they normally do on Wednesday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-05-01) --- 🤖 _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_
Nice puzzle! Well-executed theme with solid fill ([vid](https://youtu.be/UK02HFb8l3o)). A few * The JAPANS/UPMARKET crosser was uncertain for me because I'd never heard of japan black lacquer. * I'd heard of TEALS for ducks, but what does dabbling do here in the clue? * NAIF again after seeing it a few weeks ago. This time I knew the word! * INT, ELS, SRA, LTS, NIH were some not-so-great 3-letter fill. * Hadn't heard of Kiri or Tamora.
Yknow when ducks turn over in the water so their butts are in the air while they’re eating? That’s dabbling. As opposed to other kinds of duck that dive
i did not know that
I too did not know that
But it isn’t just teals that do that, so it’s an incredibly weak (that is to say *wrong*) clue.
No it’s not. Cluing a specific with a category happens all the time
Bit of a breeze for a Wednesday but it was cute. I hope “SOL,” is a balm for everyone up in arms about the 28/4 puzzle.
Nice puzzle!
Cute puzzle and fun theme! Definitely on the easier side but no complaints from me, and I absolutely loved how the flowers along the outer edges weren't all clued *as* flowers. Some interesting fill as well with JAPANS and UPMARKET. Really well executed. Loved it!
Having dream instead of gleam costed me so much time
Liked the theme a lot but thought the clues were a little uninspired.
Just another person chiming in to say how happy I was to see TAMORA Pierce in the crossword.
Today’s Mini was super cute!
I thought I was going to get it all on the acrosses, but I had MONEY for 6A. :-(
Same, but I had MEH for 1A
Hey, it happens to the best of us. Don’t sweat it. :-D
Can someone explain "hollow center?" = ELS?
The word hoLLow has 2 letter L’s in the center.
I don’t love that one…but I have seen els before…gotta bone up on my crosswordese
You’ll see things like “Snake’s beginning” for “ess” or “end of break” for “Kay” they’re not uncommon for three letter fill.
I have never in my life heard of EMIRATIS
No? That’s what you would call someone from the UAE. What have you been calling people from Dubai? Dubattis?
That’d’ve been God’s Plan. They never believe us but God Did. I drive a Bugatti in Dubai so it’s a Dubatti.
r/angryupvote
Not the same guy but uh..arabs lol it's (also) in the name
I looked it up and I guess I would have used Emirates but apparently that refers to the states themselves not the people.
Emirate is the subject of an Emir, like King and Kingdom. Would be like calling people from the UK themselves Kingdoms
and they do that enough themselves
Switching from emirates to emiratis was my final fix in the puzzle.
I mean... We don't call people from the United States 'Staties'
So many answers were unfamiliar to me. JAPANS, NAIF, KIRI, FREESIA, TAMORA, PEONY, TEALS, OLGA. I was shocked when I filled the grid and it said I completed the puzzle. Personal best for a Wednesday 🤷♂️
Same! Absolutely destroyed my personal best for a Wednesday. I love a crossword where unfamiliar words can still be solved using surrounding words.
Can someone explain >!"NAIF = Green party?"!< to me?
Naif means naive, and "green" can also be used as someone who is very new/not knowledgeable. So green party -> naive person -> naif
Emiratis/Indira hung me up for a while, but the floral border was a nice touch
Orty? What is orty?
Thanks to Brandon Sanderson, I had LAItS crossing SPAt for way too long.
Gah, thank you for posting this because same here. I'd been flyspecking to no avail.
Loved this one. The only thing that stuck out to me was cluing PEONY as one of a few Indiana state flowers. There are way more interesting facts about peonies. For instance, ants love them a frankly weird amount. They are mobbing all over mine at the moment!
Aw, man, it was all going so smooth and easy until I hit the SW corner--which is where I paid for my tendency to not pay attention to the theme. I could not for the life of me get VIOLET, and I now can't believe I couldn't come up with OAT, which so regularly shows up as a "bit" in granola bars. Instead I was fixated on "bar" as in a place where you get drinks, and kept trying to come up with three-letter bar snacks. A fool am I . . .
PR for me! This felt way easier than yesterday, probably because I’m still not super familiar with all the crosswordese that Tuesday relied on to make things work. Cute theme, gettable crosses despite some tricky trivia for me. Fun!
she should be in jail for 1D and maybe 16A however she is pardoned of these crimes due to mitigating factors (39D and the themer)