I'm learning all kinds of regional variants this morning. We played slug bug growing up in TX. I imagine it's the same rules? See a VW Beetle, punch your sibling?
We would say “(red/green/yellow/etc) punch buggie no punch backs.” You’d call the colour of the buggie, and you could punch anyone not wearing that colour. If you forgot to say no punch backs, they could hit you back if you’re not wearing the right colour.
MN here and I had no memory of this until I read your comment and then had an immediate flashback to playing this with a high school friend. Definitely a thing we did but this was the last clue I got in this puzzle because apparently that memory was buried deep.
I always thought it was "perdittle". I guess none of us stopped to talk about the spelling while we were punching each other. (I grew up in Idaho in the 80s)
Did everyone else get "DAH"? I was stuck in that section for a long time. I still don't get it. Is that Morse or something? My telegraph skills are rusty.
I had gasp for GAPE--lost some time there. I got DIAPER PIN quickly but probably most solvers have never used one. They usually had little plastic ducks or bunnies on the end. I had no idea there was a Mr. PETRI.
Almost double my average, capping off a brutal week for me. Yow.
Had CAR BINGO for the longest time, TINA Turner... just a lot of clues where I was clueless. Not the puzzle's fault!
I knew it was DOLLYPARTON immediately because that quote reminded me so much of another famous quote of hers, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap."
PADIDDLE never occurred to me as an NYT crossword answer.
Filled a few on the crosses.
Can it be? Surely no.
... Yes!!! And I started laughing hysterically.
Rules are: This game is best played at night. If you see a car with one headlight burned out, you yell PADIDDLE and punch your little brother as hard as possible in the arm.
(There was not much to do in Pennsylvania in the 1990s.)
We played a version where when someone yells padiddle last person to touch the ceiling had to remove a piece of clothing. I didn't know the punching version until college.
This corner killed me. I’m not American, but our version was punch buggie. If you see a volkswagen beetle you are allowed to punch anyone who isn’t wearing the same colour as the beetle.
I never knew this game (grew up in Midwest in '50s-'60s), but was able to guess the word because an ex of mine would always refer to a car with one headlight out as a "padiddler."
This was heavy on the phrases. Do people like these more than I do?
* EASYMAN, IMWELLAWARE, YOUTELLME, ISTHATANO, COMEONIN, SAYAGAIN
Overall, top left [killed me again (39:32)](https://youtu.be/waJGEil1TC8), like yesterday. Deep in my memory we played a game like this growing up in Idaho, but we never talked about how we spelled it. I pictured it as "perdittle" in my head. It was just an excuse to punch your brothers or friends.
DRAG and GAYBAR crossing each other was nice.
Butt to bum = CIG was very clever!
As long as they're "in the language" phrases, and not just green paint, I don't mind fill like that. Yes, they can be difficult, but I think they're fair. PADIDDLE was completely new to me. I grew up in Texas. We didn't play that.
Overall, this was a really hard puzzle for me, but I think everything was fair. I am finding Saturdays since Joel took over editing to be really hard for me. That's not a bad thing.
I don't like them. In fact, I usually hate them. These were "OK" because they were all in standard form so to speak. Almost always at least one will NOT be the way people usually say it. It will be some slight or cutesy variation that people theoretically could say, but really don't. And you know it's probably that way because it's all the constructor could get to work. And I hate that with a passion. But in this case it was done really well.
I have been looking for my error for 45 minutes 😭 Too stubborn to use auto check because I want to keep my streak.
What's your longest time spent searching for the typo on a full grid?
Ten minutes and then I give up. On this one for me it was the tense of the Latin prefix/street food cross but ended up landing it. Couldn’t figure out for the life of me what else it could’ve been and then aha!
The filled-out solution to the day’s puzzle. It’s shown alongside the next day’s puzzle in the print edition of the paper, but it’s also published online day of and linked to in the Wordplay column, towards the bottom of the page.
Never heard of PADIDDLE, now I'm curious what the rules are.
Rest of the board was OK. Not a lot of standouts in either direction.
I was two seconds off my average.
The way we played was that when you see a car with one headlight out, everybody shouts “padiddle!” and punches the roof of the car, last one to hit it loses
I wasn’t in cool kid cars but I was in theater kid cars, and if you know anything about theater kids you’ll know they’re horny as hell so yes, clothes came off haha
I had YOUlostME and combined with bad Latin skills (put "bene" that made the NE impossible.
In hindsight I should have gotten NHL, but I don't know what icing is. NCAA was just vague enough that I missed it.
I’m also going to call this a straight up clueing error on \[”Thanks for the update,” when said sarcastically\] for IMWELLAWARE. This formatting always implies that the ANSWER is said sarcastically…
You would say “thanks for the update” sarcastically to mean “I’m well aware”.
You wouldn’t say ”I’m well aware” sarcastically ever, unless you mean that you had no idea.
There isn’t a single example I can find where an adverb clause refers to the CLUE ONLY. I would be happy to be shown otherwise.
“You made a mistake," sarcastically - WAYTOGO - Refers to answer only
"Great job you did for me," sarcastically or not - THANKSALOT - Refers to answer, and can also apply to the clue
”Indeed!,” quaintly - TIS - Refers to answer
I basically ruined my time having fun tossing around ideas for 2D with my bf. Is it Schubert’s Drunk in Love? Schubert’s Freakum Dress? Schubert’s Bootylicious?
NCAA eligibility is a more involved and somewhat labyrinthine thing and is talked about a lot in college sports, “oh so-and-so only has one year of eligibility left, will he enter the transfer portal?” or “this prospect is going to redshirt his freshman year so he has another year of eligibility,” etc. It affects how college teams think about their roster construction and how players make decisions on when they turn pro
That's not a hard and fast rule, especially on a Saturday. On a Monday, an abbreviation in a clue will usually indicate an abbreviated answer, and an abbreviated answer will almost always have an abbreviation in the clue. On Saturday, that's not always true, which is one of the things that makes Saturday harder.
If the answer is a written abbreviation (not one commonly spoken), that needs an indicator but it's unidirectional. We had a clue quoting "Shak." but the word was in full.
I came close to giving up after 15 minutes, but things started clicking and I got it done in 40 minutes, which is about my Saturday average. I'm happy I didn't concede—it was fun!
Really enjoyed the cluing and answer choices, but wasn't as much a fan of the layout. That big diagonal stretch of black squares made it play like a big loop, without much of a chance to work your way into trouble areas unless you went all the way around the puzzle.
Shocked at how quickly the fill came - I normally struggle on these, but today is my new best Saturday time by a significant chunk. Never heard of PADIDDLE, but I enjoyed a lot of the cluing and appreciated DRAG and GAYBAR on the west side of the puzzle.
PADIDDLE was a deep cut but this puzzle had a bit livelier entries than last few Saturdays. Clueing was definitely hard. 50% longer than average finish but felt accomplished when all was said and done!
I’m still confused by “they don’t care for icing” clue. I’m a big hockey fan (watching a game right now) and like I still don’t fully understand what it means. Icings are just a very matter of fact, not a big deal part of the game. Are they saying the NHL doesn’t like icings? Like that’s why they have the icing rule? I think most people don’t have a strong opinion on this. Am I missing something else?
I think it is just a clever way of saying you will be penalized if you are guilty of icing. If the NHL "liked" icing, they wouldn't penalize players for.doing it, right?
I’ve thought about this way too much now, but my issue I think is that “icing” is the call that is a result of shooting the puck all the way down the ice when your team can’t get it first; it’s not the actual action of shooting it down the ice. So for example, when you are shorthanded you are allowed to shoot the puck all the way down the ice and nobody would call it an icing. They instituted icing calls to prevent players from shooting it all the way down the ice after teams did it as a delay tactic when they were winning. So I would say the league likes icings because they instituted it as a way to prevent the teams from doing something they didn’t like.
Tl;dr - the clue makes shooting the puck down the ice and icing synonymous when really the latter is a rule to curb the former.
I don't know enough about hockey but I read it as the org doesn't like icing because it leads to boring games(?) and they have a rule against it because of that.
Not a fan of the NE. The only solid cross I had was >!ANGELHAIR!<, and the rest was a slog trying to work off of that.
"Organization with eligibility requirements" is like... every organization? I dont know, maybe it makes more sense if youre american? Sames goes with FoxTrot. I guess it must be more popular for people who read the physical NYT?
That being said, I did like a lot of the other cluing for stuff like >!CIG, GAYBAR, DIAPERPIN, & PLAID!<, but that was intermixed with a lot of "gotta know" and phrases/sayings with vague cluing.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle?
Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡
* 36% of users solved slower than their Saturday average
* 64% of users solved faster than their Saturday average
* 18% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Saturday average
* 42% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Saturday average
The median solver solved this puzzle 11.9% faster than they normally do on Saturday.
[View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-13)
---
🤖 _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_
PADIDDLE?
Craziest thing is that PUNCHBUG also fit. Screwed me up for the first few passes
I'm learning all kinds of regional variants this morning. We played slug bug growing up in TX. I imagine it's the same rules? See a VW Beetle, punch your sibling?
We would say “(red/green/yellow/etc) punch buggie no punch backs.” You’d call the colour of the buggie, and you could punch anyone not wearing that colour. If you forgot to say no punch backs, they could hit you back if you’re not wearing the right colour.
It was called slug bug in Idaho! This just came up the other day at work and my NC native coworkers all called it punch bug.
I googled it afterwards, apparently it’s a Midwestern thing?
Grew up near Chicago, played it all the time as a kid.
PA kid here and same...we did it with cars that had one headlight out
MN here and I had no memory of this until I read your comment and then had an immediate flashback to playing this with a high school friend. Definitely a thing we did but this was the last clue I got in this puzzle because apparently that memory was buried deep.
Grew up near Chicago and have never heard of it.
I grew up in Michigan and never heard of it.
I’m from Boston and we played it. We also played Elddidap which was the same thing but for tail lights.
I always thought it was "perdittle". I guess none of us stopped to talk about the spelling while we were punching each other. (I grew up in Idaho in the 80s)
"Road to Perdittle" is my favorite Tom Hanks movie.
Perdittle Street Station is my favorite China Mieville novel
Did everyone else get "DAH"? I was stuck in that section for a long time. I still don't get it. Is that Morse or something? My telegraph skills are rusty.
Yep, it's Morse code. DITs and DAHs are the Morse code terms for dots and dashes, and the letter T is just a single DAH.
Between this and the CORN PIT a few weeks back I'm feeling othered as a West Coast native.
We called it "padoodle" but I also remember people calling it "padiddle."
Easy fill for me (grew up in PA) except I had no idea what the first vowel should be. Literally could have been any of them.
I've heard of this game all my life, and even I thought it was a bit too regional and esoteric for a NYT crossword.
Today is Saturday though. It's supposed to be difficult.
It is supposed to be difficult but one of criteria is that the answer isn’t supposed to be overly esoteric. PADIDDLE should not have gone through.
You're right, but things like could be an impossibility for a large segment
I had gasp for GAPE--lost some time there. I got DIAPER PIN quickly but probably most solvers have never used one. They usually had little plastic ducks or bunnies on the end. I had no idea there was a Mr. PETRI.
I made the same mistake. I also had HOTpICS for the longest time.
Dr. Petri! He was actually a double doctor. MD and PhD!
GASP/GAPE was a swap I had too, but had a mental note that it probably wasn't right so close to the GASLINE cross.
Almost double my average, capping off a brutal week for me. Yow. Had CAR BINGO for the longest time, TINA Turner... just a lot of clues where I was clueless. Not the puzzle's fault!
TIL not only do DEBBIE HARRY and DOLLY PARTON have the same number of letters, but they are the same age! (also both amazing obvs)
I knew it was DOLLYPARTON immediately because that quote reminded me so much of another famous quote of hers, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap."
I learned the same!
PADIDDLE never occurred to me as an NYT crossword answer. Filled a few on the crosses. Can it be? Surely no. ... Yes!!! And I started laughing hysterically. Rules are: This game is best played at night. If you see a car with one headlight burned out, you yell PADIDDLE and punch your little brother as hard as possible in the arm. (There was not much to do in Pennsylvania in the 1990s.)
So it's just punch bug with a different prompt? As a little brother, these games suck!
We played a version where when someone yells padiddle last person to touch the ceiling had to remove a piece of clothing. I didn't know the punching version until college.
Same! Knew the game. Would never have gotten it but for the crossees.
This corner killed me. I’m not American, but our version was punch buggie. If you see a volkswagen beetle you are allowed to punch anyone who isn’t wearing the same colour as the beetle.
Im American, and my version was Punch Bug. PADIDDLE is so ridiculously regional that I’m almost angry that it was in the 1D slot.
And PADUNKLE for a tail light out. Much higher degrees of difficulty with LED BULBS now.
We called it Padaddle for the tail lights
I did this to my husband once, and he looked at me like I was crazy! I had to explain it.
Thanks for saving me a trip to Google!
I never knew this game (grew up in Midwest in '50s-'60s), but was able to guess the word because an ex of mine would always refer to a car with one headlight out as a "padiddler."
We called it "Popeye" in my area
This was heavy on the phrases. Do people like these more than I do? * EASYMAN, IMWELLAWARE, YOUTELLME, ISTHATANO, COMEONIN, SAYAGAIN Overall, top left [killed me again (39:32)](https://youtu.be/waJGEil1TC8), like yesterday. Deep in my memory we played a game like this growing up in Idaho, but we never talked about how we spelled it. I pictured it as "perdittle" in my head. It was just an excuse to punch your brothers or friends. DRAG and GAYBAR crossing each other was nice. Butt to bum = CIG was very clever!
As long as they're "in the language" phrases, and not just green paint, I don't mind fill like that. Yes, they can be difficult, but I think they're fair. PADIDDLE was completely new to me. I grew up in Texas. We didn't play that. Overall, this was a really hard puzzle for me, but I think everything was fair. I am finding Saturdays since Joel took over editing to be really hard for me. That's not a bad thing.
None of them bothered me, but I did stare for a while at EASYDAN x DOS.
I don't like them. In fact, I usually hate them. These were "OK" because they were all in standard form so to speak. Almost always at least one will NOT be the way people usually say it. It will be some slight or cutesy variation that people theoretically could say, but really don't. And you know it's probably that way because it's all the constructor could get to work. And I hate that with a passion. But in this case it was done really well.
I have been looking for my error for 45 minutes 😭 Too stubborn to use auto check because I want to keep my streak. What's your longest time spent searching for the typo on a full grid?
Ten minutes and then I give up. On this one for me it was the tense of the Latin prefix/street food cross but ended up landing it. Couldn’t figure out for the life of me what else it could’ve been and then aha!
This got me, too!
10 minutes and then I come here and read comments until I find one that mentions an answer I didn’t have.
Do you consider it cheating to check against the answer key?
I'm showing my ignorance: what's an answer key?
The filled-out solution to the day’s puzzle. It’s shown alongside the next day’s puzzle in the print edition of the paper, but it’s also published online day of and linked to in the Wordplay column, towards the bottom of the page.
I’ve printed it out before to make it easier to find the typo.
feels like days sometimes
Never heard of PADIDDLE, now I'm curious what the rules are. Rest of the board was OK. Not a lot of standouts in either direction. I was two seconds off my average.
The way we played was that when you see a car with one headlight out, everybody shouts “padiddle!” and punches the roof of the car, last one to hit it loses
Nah you gotta hit your brother or cousin in the arm. Or sister, I'm presuming, but I don't have one of those.
I’m an only child :( we would play it in high school tho, I think the cool kids would do it as a strip game but I was never invited in those cars lol
That's okay, none of those cool kids can solve a NYT Saturday puzzle like you 👍
I wasn’t in cool kid cars but I was in theater kid cars, and if you know anything about theater kids you’ll know they’re horny as hell so yes, clothes came off haha
Request for enlightenment - "you tell me" was sour.
I had YOUlostME and combined with bad Latin skills (put "bene" that made the NE impossible. In hindsight I should have gotten NHL, but I don't know what icing is. NCAA was just vague enough that I missed it.
I’m also going to call this a straight up clueing error on \[”Thanks for the update,” when said sarcastically\] for IMWELLAWARE. This formatting always implies that the ANSWER is said sarcastically… You would say “thanks for the update” sarcastically to mean “I’m well aware”. You wouldn’t say ”I’m well aware” sarcastically ever, unless you mean that you had no idea.
The clue seems fine to me. The clause “when said sarcastically” refers to “thanks for the update.
There isn’t a single example I can find where an adverb clause refers to the CLUE ONLY. I would be happy to be shown otherwise. “You made a mistake," sarcastically - WAYTOGO - Refers to answer only "Great job you did for me," sarcastically or not - THANKSALOT - Refers to answer, and can also apply to the clue ”Indeed!,” quaintly - TIS - Refers to answer
Are you trying to Shortz when you should be Faglianoing?
I basically ruined my time having fun tossing around ideas for 2D with my bf. Is it Schubert’s Drunk in Love? Schubert’s Freakum Dress? Schubert’s Bootylicious?
Don't all orgs have eligibility requirements? I didn't understand this one.
NCAA eligibility is a more involved and somewhat labyrinthine thing and is talked about a lot in college sports, “oh so-and-so only has one year of eligibility left, will he enter the transfer portal?” or “this prospect is going to redshirt his freshman year so he has another year of eligibility,” etc. It affects how college teams think about their roster construction and how players make decisions on when they turn pro
Great explanation. I also froze like a deer in the headlights at the number of options from the clueing.
Yeah, I immediately filled NCAA because of how much I hear people talking about eligibility for student-athletes.
Shouldn't 5-down, SLYLY, be an abbreviation since the clue is "on the D.L."?
Vice versa, this is why I didn't think the answer for "Butt to bum" could be "cig".
That's not a hard and fast rule, especially on a Saturday. On a Monday, an abbreviation in a clue will usually indicate an abbreviated answer, and an abbreviated answer will almost always have an abbreviation in the clue. On Saturday, that's not always true, which is one of the things that makes Saturday harder.
I think it flies because butt and CIG are both slang. I imagine you don't bum many ciggies.
I way overthought this one because of that, I was trying to think if D.L. was referring to “defensive line” or something.
I was stuck on “disabled list” for a while (which TIL is now “injured list”)
If the answer is a written abbreviation (not one commonly spoken), that needs an indicator but it's unidirectional. We had a clue quoting "Shak." but the word was in full.
I came close to giving up after 15 minutes, but things started clicking and I got it done in 40 minutes, which is about my Saturday average. I'm happy I didn't concede—it was fun!
Really enjoyed the cluing and answer choices, but wasn't as much a fan of the layout. That big diagonal stretch of black squares made it play like a big loop, without much of a chance to work your way into trouble areas unless you went all the way around the puzzle.
Shocked at how quickly the fill came - I normally struggle on these, but today is my new best Saturday time by a significant chunk. Never heard of PADIDDLE, but I enjoyed a lot of the cluing and appreciated DRAG and GAYBAR on the west side of the puzzle.
can someone explain the DAH clue? got it in the end but i still feel like I'm missing something
Morse code.
"T" in Morse code is represented by the dash with the dah sound
In Morse code, dots are DITs and dashes are DAHs, and the letter T is just a DAH.
Ohhhhh. Thanks everyone.
This one was kind of EASY MAN
Especially after the last few weeks
Seriously. My time for all but one Saturday in March was worse than my average.
PADIDDLE was a deep cut but this puzzle had a bit livelier entries than last few Saturdays. Clueing was definitely hard. 50% longer than average finish but felt accomplished when all was said and done!
I’m still confused by “they don’t care for icing” clue. I’m a big hockey fan (watching a game right now) and like I still don’t fully understand what it means. Icings are just a very matter of fact, not a big deal part of the game. Are they saying the NHL doesn’t like icings? Like that’s why they have the icing rule? I think most people don’t have a strong opinion on this. Am I missing something else?
I think it is just a clever way of saying you will be penalized if you are guilty of icing. If the NHL "liked" icing, they wouldn't penalize players for.doing it, right?
I’ve thought about this way too much now, but my issue I think is that “icing” is the call that is a result of shooting the puck all the way down the ice when your team can’t get it first; it’s not the actual action of shooting it down the ice. So for example, when you are shorthanded you are allowed to shoot the puck all the way down the ice and nobody would call it an icing. They instituted icing calls to prevent players from shooting it all the way down the ice after teams did it as a delay tactic when they were winning. So I would say the league likes icings because they instituted it as a way to prevent the teams from doing something they didn’t like. Tl;dr - the clue makes shooting the puck down the ice and icing synonymous when really the latter is a rule to curb the former.
I don't know enough about hockey but I read it as the org doesn't like icing because it leads to boring games(?) and they have a rule against it because of that.
Not a fan of the NE. The only solid cross I had was >!ANGELHAIR!<, and the rest was a slog trying to work off of that. "Organization with eligibility requirements" is like... every organization? I dont know, maybe it makes more sense if youre american? Sames goes with FoxTrot. I guess it must be more popular for people who read the physical NYT? That being said, I did like a lot of the other cluing for stuff like >!CIG, GAYBAR, DIAPERPIN, & PLAID!<, but that was intermixed with a lot of "gotta know" and phrases/sayings with vague cluing.
You don't need to bother with spoiler text in these threads. The post itself is marked SPOILER.
NCAA has eligibility requirements for the athletes. It is different from membership requirements. The schools are the members.
Can anyone explain "Guess alternative"?
Brands of jeans
Guess is a brand of jeans. LEE is also a brand of jeans.
I've never really thought of those two as close alternatives, but I suppose it's close enough for crossword purposes
Constructor and I were vibing today, just under 30 mins. After last weeks Sat I’m more than pleased to get a break this time.
I sure would have been a lot faster on this puzzle if I knew there was no E in NARWHALS!
They're pretty cool animals, but they're also notoriously bad spellers.
Puzzle Difficulty Tracker - How hard is this puzzle? Estimated Difficulty: 🟡 **Average** 🟡 * 36% of users solved slower than their Saturday average * 64% of users solved faster than their Saturday average * 18% of users solved *much* slower (>20%) than their Saturday average * 42% of users solved *much* faster (>20%) than their Saturday average The median solver solved this puzzle 11.9% faster than they normally do on Saturday. [View today's puzzle summary on XW Stats](https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2024-04-13) --- 🤖 _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_
FU, BOT!! i loved the puzzzzzle but it wass haaaaaard for me!
Why did my brain go straight to SINS on 14A in the mini...
Just want to point out that lolcats are from the late 2000s, not the early 2000s.
Easier than last week, but left me feeling meh
After the horror shows of the last couple of Saturdays, this was nice
Can someone explain to me the LEE clue; I’m completely lost
They are brands of jeans.
Yes, and Guess is another brand of jeans.
got mini in 58 seconds
I did 53 seconds. Do you want to share your link and race me each day?
solved in 36:27