Thursday, March 19, 2020

Thursday, March 19, 2020, Wayne Bergman and Gary Otting

8:18

Today's puzzle comes up with a CTRL-N twist on an old idea: replacing parts of phrases with the SHORTCUT you would use in a word processing program. And CTRL-A of them are spot on! Nothing I would CTRL-Z.

Okay, enough of that.

I filled in the NW corner quickly enough, aided by everybody's favorite auntie, MAME. So I knew right off the bat that something was up, but couldn't figure out the answer at 19A: Protection from piracy (CTRLCRIGHT) - copyright. So I worked my way up from the SW corner instead. I like the two "Elude" clues, leading to old friends DODGE and AVOID.

In fact, the first theme answer I got (after the revealer) was TOOTHCTRLV. Which I first entered as TOOTHpaste. And then it hit me. My favorite of the four is NICECTRLF. That's fun!
FETA - yum!
I notice a number of odd answers such as VDAY, CFLAT, EASTLA. I wonder if the theme answers with strings of consonants forced some different style of words. The note, which only ever shows up in G-flat major or E-flat minor for the most part (why write in C-flat major when B major with five sharps is equivalent?), is one of those ad hoc answers, nearly as problematic as TENTOONE. It is an ubiquitous time. Happens twice a day. But still, one of these days we might end up with "eightfortytwo" as an answer.

On the other hand, I enjoyed POOHBEAR, a rarely seen but completely acceptable version of his name.

- Colum

P.S. - A double debut puzzle! Congratulations to Mr. Bergman and Mr. Otting.

2 comments:

  1. 7:49
    Caught on very quickly and raced through. I, too, liked seeing POOHBEAR in there. And we just got a ROKU at Christmas, and boy oh boy has that been coming in handy lately!

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  2. 8:32
    I, too, caught on pretty quickly. I use CTRL-C and CTRL-V regularly (probably most people do). In fact, when I finish writing my blog comment, I highlight the whole thing and CTRL-C before re-reading and hitting "Publish," just in case some glitch happens. In that way, I AVOID having to rewrite. CALC is always nice to see, and remains one of my favorite things to this day. Don't winds tend to enjoy flat keys and strings sharp, in general? At least, that's what I've always been lead to believe. I suppose it really shouldn't make too much of a difference, though. I play piano, and it doesn't matter to me one bit. I suppose I should watch that movie with MAME in it one of these days.

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