Manhattan
nyc
43
Comments
0.532
Avg Sentiment
25
Positive
12
Neutral
6
Negative
nyc
I'm puzzled by the meh-to-negative response to this puzzle. I thought it was very clever, and I enjoyed working out the theme. My thanks and congrats to the constructors.
I appreciated Sam Corbin's comments about the tone in the solvers' comments. Because of how negative they've been for a while now, I stopped reading them and stopped contributing. I was flagging comments, but that didn't seem to work, so I figured there was no recourse. I think the NYT could moderate a bit more assiduously.
Great puzzle! It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the relation between, e.g., "sixteen" and "16", even though it was staring me in the face. Yes, the little visual circles were a great idea. Thank you, Daniel Bodily, though I do have a hard time believing that that's your name. At any rate, bravo!
This was fantastic! Each theme answer brought a laugh. Thank you for such a clever and rewarding puzzle.
I just read Rich Katz's comments. I love PLAYS WITH MATCHES. That would have been great. With respect to the question you asked about the elegance, or lack thereof, of the grid, it didn't affect me at all. Your puzzle was a complete delight. Take a bow!
Excellent puzzle. Very clever, and rewarding to complete. A good beginning to a college career!
Genuinely clever. Worth solving.
Wonderful theme, very nicely clued. I wish there had been room for the genetic fallacy and the tu quoque fallacy. One of the fallacies in the puzzle has a name that was new to me. The puzzle was a lot of fun, and I thank John Ewbank.
Absolutely brilliant. I can't imagine thinking this up, and implementing it must've been a major challenge. Just great. Many thanks.
@Megan - I can see various occasions where "not my first romeo" could come up! In fact, it's a great variant.
Very clever, very satisfying - smile-inducing.
English has 50K words. I wish the puzzles would make use of the very rich English lexicon instead of relying on proper names. This is just lazy puzzle setting. NYT: please improve!
Terrific! Wonderful words - 25 across, for example. Very clever theme that was satisfying to figure out. A pleasure to solve.
Very clever and thoughtful. I wonder what other letters, if any, could be similarly systemically inserted in words to create new words. Maybe 's' - (s)en(s)ate. Though who knew enate was a word? Fun. I like it when a puzzle prompts me to think about the structure of words and see patterns I hadn't realized existed.
Simple, as the constructors say, but clever and fun to do. I had never noticed how many double word expressions there were. Very nice.
This was wonderful, Owen, challenging and full of post-solution aha moments. I love the fact that you can and do represent your identity in your puzzle. Hats off!
@SP - thanks for your comment about advocating to the editors. I agree that it is the least helpful. If someone wants to reach the editor, they can write directly to the editor. "Too easy" and "too hard" aren't useful.
@Steve L - Thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree that my opinion is just that - my opinion. 'ATM fee' is not my idea of a good time. I'm more of a purist in the scrabble tradition, I suppose. But you and others are fine with proper names, so vive la difference. (I also wish there would be fewer non-English words and fewer reuses of the same old words.) I think things have gotten worse in the proper name direction. It's an empirical question, but I doubt that either of us is going to do the necessary research to come up with a definitive answer. And, quite right, I understated the number of words in English by quite a bit. I loved Simeon Seigel's puzzle on Feb 1, by the way.
@HeathieJ - Your comment is poignant and uplifting at the same time. I'm very glad you escaped teendom not just alive, but happy, and have a wonderful husband. Mean kids everywhere: just stop it!
Brilliant! I completed the puzzle without understanding the trick. I tried numerous ways of reparsing 63-across, including finding "robs rats" as a backwards fragment, before deciding to sleep on it. Very very clever.
This was a lot of fun. I loved the long entries, and the theme was just right. Congrats!
"Perfect, e.g," represents aspect, not tense.
@Amy - I flag comments when I think they are gratuitiously insulting - that is the kind of tone I'm objecting to.
I loved seeing the Billy Joel reference. The "official" video of the song in question is great.
@john ezra - Absolutely great comment! I happened to sit in on a class a few years ago where the instructor talked about the concept of a panopticon at length. Hey - maybe you were that instructor!
@Marshall Walthew - Scarlett O'Hara: "After all, tomorrow is another day."
Wow - very surprised that 48-down is considered Monday level. It's indeed a gimme for academics, but I wouldn't have thought that it was for non-academics.
Very nice puzzle, except for includeing both "go" and "goes" in the same puzzle. I figured that was impossible, given crossword conventions, and thus kept looking for nonexistent alternatives. What was up with that, editors?
@Hub - I hear you! There's also 10D and 27A. I used an alternate word for 27A initially because I didn't think the constructor would use two words that are so close. But a lot of the longer answers were enjoyable.
@Katie - I don't flag a post just because I disagree with it. I agree that that would be inappropriate!
@Barry Ancona - I think that's the case for words like determiners, complementizers, and prepositions, but it's not typical for verbs and nouns - except when it's deliberate. Granted, "go" is a so-called light verb, but it's unusual to have that repetition.
@BAuskern - Indeed, very hard to gripe. Trivia-wise, I'm not sure that it matters what demographic it's aimed at. It's trivia(l).
Great puzzle! Very clever, very enjoyable! And I learned a word I'm glad to add to my vocabulary - men who marry late in life. I'm very impressed that one of the author's children said the theme to the other.
@SP - I should have been clearer. I didn't mean that most non-academics wouldn't know the word 'tenure', but that they wouldn't know that was a goal of assistant professors.
@jennie - I should have been clearer. I thought most non-academics wouldn't know that tenure was a goal of assistant professors, not that they wouldn't know the word 'tenure'.
@Shawn - I don't flag comments just for criticizing a puzzle. I'd have to flag my own comments! lol.
@RPS - Interesting! I wasn't familiar with that song. Thanks for alerting me. His daughter's name is Alexa.
@Maddy - Yes, what's up with that?
@Mr Dave - The home team bats at the bottom of the inning, or last.
@The X-Phile - Brinkley is amazing in that video. The contrast between her and Joel is is so striking. I thought there was some disagreement about whether the song was written about her or McPherson. Joel's a flawed person, no question.
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