NYT Mini Crossword July 2 Answers and Hints: Get all today's clues solved in one place
NYT Mini Crossword July 2 Across hints and answers
Let's start with the across clues. These were some fun and sneaky ones:
Clean with elbow grease: Scrub
Fruit to which wrinkly fingers are compared: Prune
"Meenie miney" preceder: Eenie
Light bulb units: Watts
"Meenie miney" follower: Moe
NYT Mini Crossword July 2 Down hints and answers
The down clues had a few head-scratchers, but here's what they were and the answers:
Erupt with force: Spew
Doughnut filling: Cream
Total, as expenses: Run to
Come together as one: Unite
They're often abuzz about coneflowers: Bees
What is NYT Mini Crossword?
The Mini is a fun, quick puzzle from the New York Times that's perfect for people who love word games but don't have much time. With only a few clues going across and down, it's more about speed and clever thinking. Still, one tricky clue can slow you down fast.
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Time of India
12 minutes ago
- Time of India
From Pather Panchali to Zohran Mamdani: Why brown people eating with their hands gives the West nightmares - decoding the culture war
The Mamdani Controversy: Rice, Rituals, and MAGA Outcry This summer, a viral video showed New York politician Zohran Mamdani eating biryani with his hands during an interview. In response, Texas Congressman Brandon Gill fumed that 'civilised people in America don't eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World. ' His wife Danielle D'Souza Gill – an India-born MAGA pundit – piled on, declaring she 'never grew up eating rice with [her] hands' and 'always used a fork,' insisting her Indian Christian relatives did the same. The outburst ignited a social media firestorm. Critics noted the hypocrisy: Americans routinely devour burgers, tacos, fries, and pizza by hand, yet Gill condemned hand-eating as 'uncivilised.' Many pointed out that billions eat with their hands daily, labelling his comments as pure racism. Images of President Trump eating pizza with his bare hands swiftly made the rounds, mocking the idea that hand-eating is somehow barbaric. In the end, people across Asia stood up for the common practice of eating with one's hands, underlining that dining customs run deep in culture and are not to be dictated by Western lawmakers with fragile sensibilities. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like One of the Most Successful Investors of All Time, Warren Buffett, Recommends: 5 Books for Turning... Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Click Here Undo Ray's Pather Panchali and Western Snobbery This isn't the first time Western audiences have bristled at seeing Asians eat authentically. When Satyajit Ray 's Pather Panchali debuted in 1955, some Western critics recoiled at its realism. The story begins with a rural Bengali family eating rice with their hands, and French filmmaker François Truffaut quipped he 'did not want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands.' The New York Times reviewer similarly sniffed that the film was too loose and listless, despite its understated poetry. Even in India, some officials feared the film was 'exporting poverty,' with former actress-turned-politician Nargis Dutt famously making that charge. Ray's work later became a world classic, but the initial response reflects an old bias: Western gatekeepers found an honest portrayal of humble, hand-to-mouth life unacceptable. Poor brown people eating with their hands was not what the Cannes set wanted with their champagne. Why Eating with Hands Feels Better For millions of Indians, eating with one's hands is not just tradition but pleasure. The act engages all five senses. You feel the warmth of the rice and dal as your fingers mix them together. You mould a perfect bite-sized morsel, adding curry or pickle to balance the flavours. The touch tells you if the roti is still soft, if the rice has cooled enough, if the fish bones have been removed. In Ayurveda, eating with your hands is said to activate energy centres connected to digestion. Even without mysticism, there is practicality. Indian food – with its gravies, rice, rotis, and layered textures – is designed to be mixed and balanced bite by bite. Forks and spoons reduce it to awkward scooping, like trying to paint watercolours with a ballpoint pen. Fingers are the original cutlery, tailored to your own grip, temperature tolerance, and tactile sense. The food becomes an extension of you rather than an object to be speared and lifted. Evolution of Etiquette: From Fingers to Forks In truth, using hands to eat is an ancient, global tradition. In Asia – and many parts of the Middle East and Africa – meals are still commonly eaten with the right hand. Indians traditionally wash their hands thoroughly before dining, then use fingertips to feel the temperature of the food and combine flavours. Rice and curry are picked up between the fingers and thumb and brought to the mouth. The left hand is kept clean and used only for serving or passing dishes. This is not unsanitary by local standards; careful handwashing and using only fingers (not whole hands) is part of the practice. By contrast, formal cutlery arrived in Europe relatively late. Forks spread westward through Byzantium to Italy, and only by the 1500s were forks seen among European elites. Catherine de' Medici famously brought forks to France in 1533, but even then they were a novelty. In Britain, medieval diners ate with fingers and knives until forks became fashionable in the 1700–1800s. Grand dinners with silver knives and forks became the standard only then. Before that, finger-eating was universal. But with the fork's adoption, by the 19th century, finger-eating in polite society was denounced as 'cannibal' behaviour. Western table manners, therefore, are a recent invention, codified after centuries of changing habits. Colonial Attitudes and Modern Double Standards These new Western norms carried moral overtones in the colonial era. British colonialists often disparaged Indian dining customs as primitive. By the mid-1800s, finger-eating was so taboo in polite society that etiquette guides labelled it savage. This historic snobbery resurfaced in the 1950s with Pather Panchali: showing peasants eating rice by hand was literally too unrefined for some Western eyes. Today, the Mamdani case highlights the absurdity of these attitudes. Critics who call hand-eating 'uncivilised' conveniently ignore that Americans and Europeans themselves handle many foods bare-handed. Westerners may scoff, yet most Americans eat pizza, burgers, sandwiches, fries, and chicken wings – with their hands. It is pure hypocrisy. The backlash to Mamdani shows that many people now recognise this: labelling hand-eating as unsanitary or uncivilised is little more than prejudice dressed up in etiquette. The Bottom Line: Etiquette is Cultural In the end, dining manners are deeply cultural and ever-changing. Whether one uses a fork or fingers is a matter of upbringing, not of inherent civilisation. To millions of Asians, using hands is as natural and polite as using cutlery is in the West. Judging one another's table habits misunderstands history. Forks are only a few centuries old, whereas eating by hand dates back to prehistory. Perhaps true civilisation is less about utensils and more about respect – keeping hands clean, sharing food generously, and eating with dignity. In a globalised world, demanding everyone conform to Western-style dining is an anachronism. Rather than policing plates, a more gracious etiquette is recognising that many cultures have perfectly respectable, time-honoured ways of eating – forks or hands included. Because at the end of the day, if you're offended by someone else's fingers touching their rice, it says more about you than it does about them.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
NYT Connections Today: Hints and answers for July 3, 2025
Jul 03, 2025 06:16 PM IST The New York Times' daily word game Connections remains a favorite for puzzle lovers. Every day, it drops a fresh challenge where players must group 16 seemingly random words into four related categories. The July 3 edition came with the themes: Correspondence, Airport Board Info, Pro Athlete Data and Farmers' Things, as reported by Economic Times. NYT Connections hints and answers for July 3 Each puzzle resets at midnight and gives fans a new reason to return. Categories are color-coded by difficulty: Yellow is the easiest, followed by Green, Blue, and finally Purple, which tends to be the toughest. The hints for this day's puzzle gave players a fair shot: Yellow: Communication Green: Things you notice while traveling Blue: Common in sports uniforms Purple: Related to farming tools and aids The four-word groups turned out to be straightforward once the categories were cracked. NYT Connections July 3 puzzle answers by category Here are the correct word groupings: Communication group: Contact, Dealings, Exchange, Interaction - These words point to how people stay in touch or conduct business. Travel info group: Arrival, Destination, Flight, Gate - This group reflects what is commonly displayed at airports or transport hubs. Sports data group: College, Number, Position, Team - These are the usual details mentioned about professional athletes. Farming-related items: Almanac, Insurance, Market, Tarp - This set relates to tools or aids that farmers typically rely on. ALSO READ: Brain teaser: This colourful puzzle hides a mistake in plain sight. Can you spot it? FAQs: 1. What is the NYT Connections game? NYT Connections is a daily word puzzle by The New York Times where players group 16 words into four categories based on hidden links. 2. What were the NYT Connections themes on July 3, 2025? The categories were: Correspondence, Airport Board Info, Pro Athlete Data, and Farmers' Things. 3. What is the hardest category in NYT Connections? The Purple group is usually the hardest.
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
'Spider-Man: No Way Home' intro scenes for Tobey & Andrew were changed after a fan guessed plot twist, Watts confirmed
Although and 's 2021 appearance in Tom Holland's Spider-Man: No Way Home may be one of the most exciting scenes in the MCU's history, the two former Spider-Mans' entrance into the MCU wasn't initially portrayed as such; instead, Ned was drawn into Tom's timeline by Doctor Strange's sling ring. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Throughout the movie, it showed the rings opening the portals as Andrew and Tobey entered and became trapped on Tom's side. Actually, director had a different idea for their opening. However, the entire plan was modified by a fan's guesswork! Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: No Way Home At the Mediterranean Film Festival, Watts told Collider that he had to change the story's opening scenes after a Reddit user foresaw his initial concept. Watts discussed the fan speculation that the two former Spider-Man actors would make an appearance in the third installment of the MCU film. "There had been rumors that Tobey and Andrew were going to be in the movie, and this is while we're shooting. We were writing the script, and we were working on where we wanted to reveal the guys, and it always seemed like Peter's going to be sad because Aunt May has just died, and that the portals are going to open, and the two Spider-Men are going to step out," he remarked. A Reddit post modified the strategy Watts talked about finding a fan-made image on Reddit that resembled the scene he had originally planned. "Then I was on Reddit, and I was looking at people who had already made fan art of, 'This is probably what it's going to be like when the two Spider-Men get revealed.' It was on a rooftop. It was sad; two Doctor Strange portals were open, and two Spider-Men were stepping out. I was like, 'Well, we can't do that. If that's exactly what everyone thinks we're going to do, we absolutely can't do that. '" At that point, they modified the scene to include a surprise element for fans and moved it to Ned's (Jacob Batalon) grandmother's house. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "So, after I saw all this fan art, and I decided, 'We absolutely can't do just exactly what everyone thinks we're going to do,' I was like, 'What does no one expect that we're going to do? What's something that no one's going to see coming? I was like, 'Probably having the two Spider-Men appear at Ned's Filipino grandma's house in Queens. I don't think anyone was doing fan art of that on Reddit.' It made perfect sense in the story because it's kind of the first time we leave Peter's narrative," the filmmaker revealed. Regarding Spider-Man: No Way Home Due to the portal's opening, Spider-Man: No Way Home, which also starred and Benedict Cumberbatch, brought back a number of other Spider-Man actors from earlier series. With appearances by Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, and others, the film proved an emotional roller coaster for Marvel fans.
