Maybe I'm still recovering from solving Megan Amram and Paolo Pasco's " Impossible Crossword" in the New Yorker with Horace, but some answers were almost too easy - making me doubt the obvious choice. I hesitated briefly before entering SKY for "Locale for clouds." Same with "Ending with Insta-" (GRAM).
Even though I solved the puzzle with relative EASE, that's not to say that it wasn't enjoyable. I liked "Greek letter that one might expect to come last" (ZETA), "Curbside coin collector" (METER), and "Hose holder, or kind of snake" (GARTER). I thought "You'll trip on it if you drop it" (ACID) was a clever clue.
Wishing you all a year in which LOVE spreads ALLOVERTHEPLACE and that BADSEEDS, if any, are few and far between.
~Frannie.
OK so about these puzzles. Raise your hand if you're like me, and you work your way thru, you know, smooth sailing, and you get to the end and the dreaded "Oops" msg comes up, so you backtrack through the grid and a whole minute later you come across the STUPID TYPO you made (say for example WIEL instead of WILE)? So annoying :)
ReplyDeleteYup. It wasn't WILE E. Coyote for me today, but TEA LEONI, which I misspelled "Leone." If you think it's bad while solving these at home, imagine how it is when you're at the tournament and you see a big, green blot on your otherwise perfect grid! It's so hard for me to take the time to check it over carefully after I've finished, but a minute of prevention is worth five or six (I can't remember the scoring exactly right now) if you save yourself from a mistake.
DeleteYes!!! That's what "saved" me at my maiden tournament last spring ("saved" == "catapulted to slightly sub-Colum scores") - combing through each grid looking for that kind of stupidity...
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