There’s no way “atno” comes up once a week. I’ve done several hundred NYTimes puzzles, and if I’ve come across it (and I wouldn’t doubt that I have, just the perpendicular clues had the answer filled in for me) it’s not often enough that it’s ever registered. (ETA: I mean, for “atomic number.” I’m sure I’ve seen it where it’s parsed as the words “AT NO.” But I see now that’s what you meant by the clues. Of course, the fun of a crossword is not the answers, but the creativity in the clues. This is why the New York Times crossword shines.)
“adjusted”
I do them every day, and atno as atomic number seemed obvious to me. Maybe once a week is an exaggeration though there are streaks when the same word shows up day after day.
I’ve seem atwt also but not nearly as frequently because there is only one vowel.
For us crossworders, Oreos are our favorite cookie.
And Asta our favorite dog.
And “bunny” is “playboy’s favorite”.
I came across that one a great many years ago, when I was rather too young to have ever figured that one out, or even to have understood it when I saw the answer.
I aver that is true.
How do you feel abou epees or Omoo?
I consider myself to be relatively smart, but christ, I am awful at cryptic crosswords. I just don’t have the knack.
Let me fill Asta’s bowl using my ewer.
I never got the knack for them, either. I’ve been through the tutorials of the different types of clues and the words to look out for to clue you in on the type of clue it is, but no luck. I’m lucky if I can get one or two answers in a cryptic. I love my New York Times puzzle, and that’s all I need.
How to make Aunty jaunty.
popinjay
Bah, no, I totally missed that. I’ve deleted the puzzle, but I don’t remember any other answers being backwards. Thanks everyone.
Our favorite architect is Eero Saarinen.
One of the cleverest clues I have seen was “Arctic birds descending, anarctic bird ascending”.
auks. It was a down clue
OK, that’s clever. Anyone remember the crossword puzzle in the New York Times on election day in 1996? One clue was “Lead story in tomorrow’s paper”. I solved it as “Clinton elected.” But the trick was that it could also have been solved as “Bob Dole elected.” The crossing clues could go either way. One was “black Halloween animal”, and could be either cat or bat.
That’s a great one.
My favorite clue was “HIJKLMNO”
water - “H to O”
Ok, then that must just be a quirk of mine. Whenever I see an unusual collection of letters like that, or something that looks like a word but isn’t quite, I read it backwards to see if it makes sense that way.
Yeah, that’s a famous one, and the cleverest one I’ve ever seen. Here’s the grid and the relevant clues. Very cool.
You’ll have to explain that one to me 