Apparently, no one has ever made a crossword puzzle that looks something like an old quilt before. :) Today Mr. Krozel rings the grid with unchecked letters, most of them high-value Scrabble letters, in an almost obviously pangrammatic puzzle.
I guessed at ALSO (2D: Adding to that), REDIAL (4D: Phone button) (Is that still on mobile phones?), and HIGH (6D: What you might microwave something on), and with just those three crosses, I'm almost embarrassed to admit how easily I came up with OOPSIDIDITAGAIN (15A: 2000 Britney Spears hit). MILEY (26A: 2000s teen idol, to fans), too, came a little bit to quickly.
A few that did not come at all quickly were VISCID (11D: Sticky) (Yuck. On many levels.), MENOTTI (36A: Italian-American composer who won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Saint of Bleeker Street"), and NIPA (45A: Long-leaved palm). Let's see, there's the "betel," "date," "palmetto," and now "NIPA." You know, I just went looking for other possible palm names and found this list! I suggest you all commit it to memory.
I had mistakenly entered "mmr" for 24A: Vaccine letters (DPT), and I had no idea what "25D: First name on PBS" (TAVIS) was going to be, but when I showed it to Frannie, she said them both instantly.
Loved the clue for RIVER (32A: Ohio or Illinois, but not Indiana), and I guess I appreciate the backward-nature of the clue for FAILINGSTUDENTS (7D: One measure of a school's success), but most of the long stuff was a bit mundane, and some of the other stuff was a bit off-putting (SHU, EDU, CEOS, MAS, and lots of names - DANL, GABE, LENOS, PHIL, and others already mentioned.
Unchecked letters aren't really my thing. Nor are pangrams. So I guess this wasn't my favorite.
- Horace
29:42
ReplyDeleteAnd no 1A to rate! Although I'd give a "P" an A- since it's the sixteenth letter of the alphabet and 16 is a nice power of 2. MILEY is always nice to look at, and to hear...speak, anyway; she's got a nice, full voice. A few of the longer answers went in quickly: RAISINGTHEBAR, QUEENSOFENGLAND, __ENPRIMARIES, and ___LASTRESORT (the other letters of the latter two went in a bit later since I didn't get the Britney song very quickly, ROLLOVERANIRA is not what I would consider to be financial planning, and PROCEDUREMANUAL was slowly filled in with the crosses. Dad BOD is good. I thought the pangram to be impressive, but I have lower standards, probably, than Horace, not having started solving crossword puzzles until my early forties. A good Friday, right where I like my time to be.
22:33
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you meant this, Horace, but the unchecked letters are the pangram. It's the only way I got PEAK, because I had _EA_, and K was my last letter in the pangram. I don't like this puzzle much at all. PROCEDUREMANUAL? Isn't that just two words put together? FAILINGSTUDENTS is silly. Meh.
Hmm... I didn't mean that, because I hadn't noticed it, unfortunately. It does make the puzzle better, but I agree with you, it's still not great.
ReplyDeletePeak took me forever. I had all but the P and the K last night, and I put it away and went to sleep thinking it over. In the morning, I still didn't have it, but sometime after coffee it came to me.
So I guess you should probably add about eight hours to my time!
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