Sunday, June 16, 2013

Sunday, Jun 16, 2013, Mel Rosen

1:15:26

QUESTION BOX

Blah. Impressive, I guess, that he crammed so much into this one, but the result was not very satisfying. TRINARY? (23A: Three-part), SIEUR (16D: French lord) (Sure, it's a word (think of "monsieur"), but it's none too common in French or English!), TENAM (98D: Late office opening, say) (really?), HIRER, MALABAR, HOO, ANERA, ASSYRO... and the center block isn't even solid enough to require one solution. I, of course, picked the wrong one first.

THIN. 

Nice nod to Father's Day with 46D: June honoree (DAD). They spend three entire puzzles on Mother's Day, and Father's Day gets one three-letter answer in a puzzle crammed to the teeth with crosswordese. Or should I say crosswordeez, or crosswordeze, or xwrdeze? You can say anything you want in a crossword puzzle, apparently.

But there's no sense ARGUING (96D: At it). I get what I get, and I don't get upset. Or I do. What difference does it make?

- Horace

4 comments:

  1. Horace! You sound bitter. The puzzle was the end result of the starting parameters. When you cram so much in, and leave a central space unavailable for massaging, a crossword puzzle inevitably descends into bunkum. It's a inverse relationship of enjoyability to clever theme. And further, that lack of a central space made for a puzzle which had zero flow, worsened by the fact that the long clues were not solvable on their own. GIBERS? Oof.

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  2. 57:00
    Wow...you two are tough! I enjoy the puzzles that have clues leading to several parts of a long, long answer, and the fact that the only clue is that it's a trivia question makes it that much more interesting. I don't know...seems like a lot of work this Rosen person had to go through for it not to be appreciated! Sure, I've never heard of SIEUR or GIBERS (though Horace's reference to "monsieur" brings some sense to it), but it seemed fine to me. I guess I'm not terribly picky.

    I'm still working on Saturday's.

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  3. OK, I might have been a little bitter. It certainly was an impressive amount of theme-cramming, but it's a little like an eating contest, I think. Say I were to eat as many twinkies as I could in five minutes. The total number would, I'm pretty sure, be very impressive, but my lasting enjoyment of the project would most-likely be short-lived.

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  4. Point taken. BTW, SJY has begun work on the Monday puzzle from late May. Expect a comment soon-ish.

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