59:26
It appears to be true that the more you do crossword
puzzles, the better you get at it. Don't judge by my time - I don't know that
I'm a lot faster, but I am a lot finisher. J
My supporting example from today's puzzle is 8A. Person typically taking Torts
and Contracts. I finally just dropped in the
oft-appearing-but-never-yet-met-with-in-real-life ONEL.
To my way of thinking, this grid has a very odd
structure. It looks a little like Swiss cheese with holes all over the place.
It allows four coast-to-coast answers (as I recently heard them described)
without stacks. I liked the north-to-south 15's quite a bit. I am familiar with
the movie ALIENVSPREDATOR, but I had no idea it was a hit, so it took me a
while to figure that one out.
Asimov joined the sci-fi material with his NOVELETTE
"The Bicentennial Man" and 34A. About 3 14 light-years (PARSEC) is a nice companion answer.
We ended up with quite a few abbreviations (BSS, LLDS,
LED, CLI (does that count as an abbreviation?)) and oddities in the puzzle's
"threes," with the most far out maybe being 5D. Part of the
conjugation for "avoir." One has to go pretty deep into the verb
matrix for that one. I could scarce believe my eyes when I realized what was
wanted there.
I am on the road all day today, so I can't look stuff up
the way I normally would, but stuff I would have looked up includes today's 1A.
BARBACK (Tavern assistant) (grade: D) and RUNAGATES (3A. Fugitives). I'm assuming
these are both valid words because I have a lot of faith in Mr. Shortz, but with
any less an authority at the helm, I would be extremely dubious, especially
about RUNAGATES. As we say out east, weirt. In the category of uninspiring
clue/answer pairs, I have to mention 43A. "You ain't ____!" (LYIN).
Mmnh. I also won't be able to put a picture up today due to lack of Internetz,
but maybe I'll get one up tomorrow. Watch this space. J
Horace singled out 12A. Literary reference (ALLUSION) as
fun fill. Did anyone else (Huygens, I'm looking at you) think 53A. Hot times?
(NOONS) was a real ATTENTIONGETTER, especially when grouped with ADULTERY, or
is that just me?
~Frannie.
15:56
ReplyDeleteWith guesses at both the R and B of BARBACK. RUNAGATES? Apparently related to "renegades", but even so. Wow! Tough stuff there. I thought everything was going to go swimmingly when I entered ONEL and then ENDOCRINESYSTEM. But ANANDA, SPELMAN, and AMII put paid to those ideas.
Love MRAMERICA and EYECHART. Nice cluing!
BARBACK is a very common term/position in the restaurant business. It's basically to the bartenders what the busboy is to the servers. This skewed way too easy for a Saturday. My goal on Saturday is 15 minutes of nothing! Best part of puzzle: BLAKE and KNELLS crossing ALLUSION. Very nice stuff. And I always enjoy seeing PARSEC since it brings to mind the hilarious Family Guy parody of Star Wars. I have seen ONEL twice now in the last couple weeks (maybe one was in a non-Times puzzle my Dad was working on). I do not wish to see it again.
ReplyDelete27:20 (FWOE)
ReplyDeleteI dropped BARBACK in immediately, and would have given it an A-, but that's not my call. My error was at the cross of RUNAGATES (never heard this term) and DENG (why would anyone know Murdoch's ex-wife?). I loved the puzzle, especially such nice answers as ALLISLOST, ADULTERY (because of its clue) and NOVELETTE (also because of its clue). And Frannie, I was hoping for a better answer than NOONS for the clue, and didn't make the connection that you mentioned. I always cringe when I hear PARSEC, especially if spoken by alien races or on Battlestar Galactica, since it's an Earth-based measure.