Yesterday, regular commenter Philbo remarked that the need for speed-solving may remove some of the appreciation of the puzzle during the play. I absolutely agree with him! And yet, it is next to impossible to slow oneself down.
Well, today I had to because I FWOE'd. It turns out it was SPLINE, not SPLINt. I mean, I probably knew that, but just put the T in and forgot to check the cross. On glancing through the puzzle, I am very impressed by hiding SPOON five times throughout. There are no theme answers outside of the revealer, SPOONBENDING (I guess that's a sixth "hidden" example), which gives Mr. Gilioli more freedom to deal with those triple-checked letters.
Some nice finds, too, to make it work! I love SHRAPNEL (as a word, not as a real life event), and STOPSDEAD is evocative.
I've never seen ORRISROOT in the puzzle before, nor was I aware of it specifically as a thing. Better was 4D: M.L.B.'s first Rookie of the Year (1947) (ROBINSON). I should have been able to intuit that from the year, but only on reviewing the puzzle did I understand the reference.
Very nicely done.
- Colum
Here's another way to slow oneself down : Enter ISYET and not YETTO, and then try to figure out why the upper-right corner isn't resolving. Curses! Oh well. ORRISROOT was new to me too and SPLINE didn't cause issues as I got that one from all 6 crossers. 4:13 for me.
ReplyDeleteThis went way slower than a typical Tuesday for me. And part of it, Philbo, was quickly entering "isyet!" Never heard of SPLINE, and ORRISROOT took pretty much every cross.
ReplyDeleteNice photo, Colum. I had no idea what he looked like, but I was thinking of mentioning Mr. Geller in my comment, and I Googled him just to be sure he actually did the spoon-bending thing, and it was only then that I realized you were way ahead of me. :)
I got a nice dose of schadenfreude watching Geller being 'outed' by James Randi on national television....
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