Jac
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Seattle
Imagine my delight when I remembered that I have a bank note featuring the temple of Angkor Wat right here in the room with me! ...Now imagine my disappointment when it was no help at all. XD
Delightful puzzle, disappointing column. Better than the other way around, to be fair.
[Rush delivery?] has my vote. The editors get a disappointed shake of my head for rejecting it.
This is exactly what I want in a Wordplay column. Well done, Sean; more, please!
@Francis I was stuck in the mud for some time with "STAgnaNt H2O", so I'll be the last to throw any shade your way for struggling.
FYI, the letter between India and Kilo is Juliett, with two T's. It's spelled that way as a compromise between Juliet, in which French-speakers read the T as silent, and Juliette, which might entice the rest of the world to venture a fourth syllable.
> ...I did wonder how that would affect the difficulty level. I’ll check the comments to see what y’all think. Overall difficulty was on the easier side, but this was far from my fastest Thursday solve this year. Without the circles, it might have been the hardest of the year. Grokking the theme early made me feel clever. If I'd struggled through and only understood the theme after filling in the grid entire (a possibility), my thought would instead have been, "well, isn't the constructor clever." I think the editors made the safe choice, and likely the right one. I am curious, though, about the road not traveled. Wouldn't it be a great online feature to be able to choose "hard mode" for a puzzle like this, give it a shot, and then ask to be shown the "normal mode" (adding in the circles, in this case) later if necessary?
I was convinced that this was going to be the case, and disappointed when it turned out not to be!
I have to take issue with the cluing on 5D. "SLOT INTO" takes an indirect object ("slot [direct object] into [indirect object]"), while "find a spot for" does not ("find a spot for [direct object]"). The clue would have to read "Find a spot for on, as a schedule," though that's incredibly clunky.
My favorite Thursday gimmick in a while. Delightful!
@M "I think I'm going to get into cryptic I'm sick of having to google arbitrary bs." I recently tried to get into cryptic crosswords, and this statement is the funniest thing I've read in a while! (If intentional, I applaud you; if not, here's why I laughed...) The word "sailor" in a clue can imply the letters "AB" in the answer (for Able Boatman, I think?) and the word "book" can imply the letters "NT" (for New Testament). That's where I gave up, but I wish you luck.
Help! Is there a grammarian on the plane? As far as I can tell, "chilling" can only be applied to a BEACH BUM as a verb -- "the dude is chilling on the beach" -- not as an adjective. The associated adjective is simply "chill." For a beach bum to be chilling as an adjective, they'd need to have a tendency to chill something or someone (transitive verb), as an ICE CREAM MAKER or TRUE CRIME SHOW does.
@Chris I also found those extra lines confusing. I spent half the puzzle trying to figure out what they meant in the context of the theme. I guess it's just a bug.
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