#Nyt crosswords with friends series#

I mostly got the theme answers by just imagining what familiar phrase might fit in the space available. The whole puzzle was startlingly easy, despite the theme's being not at all transparent. Also, probably shouldn't put 'End' in your revealer clue () when END is in one of your theme answers ( SHALLOW END). There are three 'ON's in this grid ( ON TASK, ON MEDS, IN ON). Boo also to YO-YO DIETER and all eating disorder clues ( 29D: One whose weight goes up and down). So boo to FRIEND ZONE and the bro culture that birthed it. We are friends-there is no 'zone,' and our love is very much requited. I'm currently on vacation with my best friend of 30+ years, who (it turns out!) is a woman. It's also part of this dumb idea that being friends with a woman is some lesser state of being. There's an undercurrent of hostility to the whole concept. I always find the term FRIEND ZONE somewhat repulsive ( 28D: Situation involving unrequited love), since it's something one dude says to another, usually mockingly, about said friend's inability to score, but it's super-gendered (only ever said of guys whose desire for a woman isn't returned), and it implicitly assumes that the woman has *done something* to the guy ( put him in said zone). The grid does give you some hefty long Downs to add to your solving pleasure, and while the first two were nice ( AT THIS RATE, DREAM HOUSE), their counterparts were both icky to me in different ways. Awkward as heck, and totally off-pattern from the much more sharply imagined first two theme clues. Or 'nail appointment' for that matter? One or both of those things is supposed to indicate 'shallow'ness, I guess, but the distance between that clue and SHALLOW END is vast, and the waters separating them choppy. Not sure what 'Sorry you're upset' has to do with any of it. And then there's this convoluted mess of a third clue. The first two are tight and follow a pattern: ']. Also, what is up with that clue on the third themer. But the puzzle wants me to believe that the line itself is a SPLIT. cliché) line you might say if *you* are splitting up with someone else. sigh, yes, when a couple 'splits,' they are finished, their coupleness is over, but 'It's not you, it's me' is not a SPLIT. An END is a finish, and a WRAP is a finish ('that's a wrap!'), but a SPLIT. SPLIT just doesn't jibe with WRAP and END very well. The themer set, in fact the very concept, just didn't quite cohere. This one did not quite come together for me. The English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Booksin 2014. The translation became the first Asian novel ever to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel. The Three-Body Problem was originally serialized in Science Fiction Worldin 2006 and published as a standalone book in 2008. In 2006 it received the Yinhe Award for Chinese science fiction, and in 2012 was described as one of the genre's most successful novels of the previous two decades. By 2015, a Chinese film adaptation of the same name was in production. The title refers to the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.

#Nyt crosswords with friends series#

The series portrays a fictional past, present and future where, in the first book, Earth encounters an alien civilization in a nearby star system that consists of three sun-like stars orbiting each other in an unstable system. It is the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past ( Chinese: 地球往事) trilogy, but the whole series is often referred to as Three-Body. The trilogy's second and third novels are The Dark Forest and Death's End, respectively. The Three-Body Problem ( Chinese: 三体 lit. 'Three-Body') is a science fiction novel written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin.