Sunday, March 10, 2024, Enrique Henestroza Anguiano and Matthew Stock

RACK 'EM UP

We enjoy a good game of Scrabble as much as the next word nerd, so this TRIPLELETTERSCORE theme was perfect for us. In Scrabble, the points are tripled, but here, the letter itself is tripled to make the Across answers work. And since it is only tripled and not sextupled, it remains a single letter in the Downs. Yes, I know, that makes four, but work with me...

I thought for a moment the theme might be dog-related when the first two entries were CRATE (New dog owner's purchase) and ASPCA (Dog adoption grp.), but things were more normal after that, with crossword darlings BTS and ALPS rounding out the top row.

"Out-of-this-world outfit" (SPACESUIT) was cute, and "Pastoral setting?" (PARISH) was clever. And I was expecting something like "swf" for "Dating inits.," but no! It's BCE. Nice. 

Is "Film archive bits" (CLIPS) a nod to the Oscars, happening later today? And is "Queen BEE" a reference to "Spelling Bee?" Oh, and what do we all think of "Strands?" Yesterday it didn't appear in the game menu on my laptop, but today it did, so I tried it out. For my money, it's about time someone improved upon the word search. 

What do you think - should we review more than just the crossword? Give a quick report on the games that we do? Should we just post these:

Or should we leave that alone? Thoughts? 

Frannie takes over tomorrow, then we can see what she thinks of all this.

I'll see you again in four weeks. Happy puzzling!

- Horace