Friday, July 10, 2020

Friday, July 10, 2020, John Lieb

0:34:16 (F.W.O.E.)

OK, Mr. Lieb, you won this round. After three semi-long plodding sessions, I finally had a letter in every square, only to find that I had spelled CHECHNYA and TERRiCREWS incorrectly. I should have known better, but, well ... this time I didn't.

The top, right, and bottom went along normally for a Friday - challenging, but gettable. MILHOUSE, LITEBRITE (Classic toy with colored pegs), and MOVEMBER (Annual event to grow awareness of men's health issues) (see photo) went in without crosses, but ANITA (Rita Moreno's "West Side Story" role), BASILICAS (Places of worship), and THEDOLE (Government assistance) took far longer to come into focus.

MOVEMBER
The author at a MOVEMBER event in 2012. Frannie was nominated for "Miss Movember" at the party, but we left before the winners were announced. I have always assumed that she won.
The West was where I spent most of my time today. Ambiguity reigned. For the clue "Same here" I tried "so do I" and "me too," for "Medium for modern marketing campaigns" I had "insta" for a while, and for "Places to wear goggles" I tried "eyeS" and even "tuBS" before finally managing to get LABS. Sheesh!

It was a struggle, but in a good way. Pinned together at the top and bottom with little things like NOS, MCI, ERS, and AGA (and I was never going to get ACC without every cross!), but in the end it was all worth it. Incongruities abounded - HIROHITO crossing URKEL, LEIA crossing ELCID, NASCARDAD beside GRAYBEARD ... fun!

I believe last week's Friday was harder for me than Saturday. I look forward to seeing whether or not that is true again.

- Horace
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. HuygensJuly 10, 2020 at 2:21 PM

    19:35 (FWTE)
    I see your error, Horace, and raise it one. I tried CENTAdOS and PAoLO because I am not one to take note of, or participate in, MOVEMBER, so somehow MOdEMoER looked just fine to me. I finished the puzzle in 17-something, but it took a couple of minutes for those errors to dawn on me, and the "duh" moment of MOVEMBER to hit. REEDIT looks strange in the grid, ENGROSSES is nice, I'm with Horace on ACC, and I wanted to stretch "ruby" out where GARNET goes, but all-in-all, no big problems. Excellent that HOISTS and HEISTS are both in the grid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Colum AmoryJuly 10, 2020 at 7:28 PM

    8:25
    Fun puzzle today. I'd never come across NASCARDAD, but as Cece said, I can see him in my mind's eye. I liked STABLE - I really really wanted "inert" but couldn't make it fit into six letters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Colum AmoryJuly 10, 2020 at 7:28 PM

      Funny also what people just have in their mind. I plopped ACC in off the clue.

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)