Charles Anderson

@MA - same here. It took me quite to realize "what flashers do" wasn't BARE.

@Steve L - I enjoyed the concept, but absolutely share your surprise that The Road Not Taken isn't still widely recognized. My poetry knowledge runs shallow, but I can only think of a couple other American poems rivaling this one for the most iconic.

@john ezra - Sly move, sneaking the constructor's namesake punctuation into your comment at the bottom, when it fits in so very well with his debut puzzle's theme! I refer, of course, to '*' aka Nathan Hale. As Eric Raymond's _The New Hacker's Dictionary_ explains, it derives from that patriot's best-remembered utterance, "I regret that I have but one asterisk for my country!"

@Some guy in I second your archives recommendation. Anyone going in, just be aware the earliest days of the Shortz era were wildly inconsistent - most of the easiest *and* a few of the hardest puzzles I've tackled are from those first few years.

@Steve L - as a data point, I've surely heard SUNK COST FALLACY at least three times as often as BELLY OF THE BEAST. I too started with ANIMUS, ASTA, and BEALTLES, and immediately got your gimmies. MY SHARONA made me smile, and treated my mind's eye to a ten second recap of my 6th grade year.

@Barry Ancona I, too, was unaware of John BUNYAN. It seems that failure to attend Hebrew school isn't sufficient on its own.

@Barry Ancona - yeah, the tribute was nice, but wow, the clueing is getting too easy, too often, for my tastes. Thank goodness for the archives, where more of the 25 year old puzzles I'm currently working my way through provide meatier challenges.

@Andrzej SYN = synonym; the clue intentionally misdirects. Imagine a comma after "zest"... MO = "modus operandi" Bialy is as Tony said; it's specifically of Jewish origin, and its name comes from Bialystok.

@Steve L - wasn't the Pacer the one whose lineage appeared to include a grotesquely misshapen goldfish bowl? Or was that one the AMC Emu?

I'm working my way forward from the Shortzception, currently in mid-1998. A bit of an anything-goes feel to the early days before the formula got ironed out: some damn-near-impossible puzzles cheek by jowl with others so breezy, I'm pretty sure future PRs will forever be out of reach.

@MACD - and at that point, the light bulb went on for you?

@Barry Ancona - Mic drop soup? IS THAT A THING? I'll stick with cream of emu.

Er, *Paolo* and Sarah. Less well done, and not at all fun: needing to retype and now extend my correction after EMUs ate the first one.

@Steve L - was the Pacer the one whose lineage appeared to include a goldfish bowl?

I've assumed that's an editorial decision to ease up a little these days. You can always jump back to a crunchier era via the archives wormhole. I'm just finishing up 2002, and find the challenge level of the late nineties / early aughts pretty consistent and satisfying.

I've felt that way a fair bit of late, and assume it stems from an editorial decision to ease up a little. You can always jump back to a crunchier era via the archives wormhole. I'm just finishing up 2002, and have found the challenge level of the late nineties & early aughts pretty consistent and satisfying. And I tell myself that exercising the memory by trying to dredge up decades-old pop culture and news references must be healthy in some way.

@Steven M. I figured the first few years worth of Shortz-era archives had put all my PRs out of reach, but got awfully close today: within 13 seconds of my Saturday best from 4 Dec 93.

@TJ 8700+ solved, fell a little short of a PR only because of the wide variability in the early days of the Shortz era.

@Kris T - it doesn't sound like my new favorite waiting to be discovered, but still preferable to the others. I *do* enjoy rye & absinthe in the same glass, in America's first (and maybe still best) cocktail, the Sazerac - but not in anything remotely approaching a 1:1 ratio!