Gail
Portland, ME
I was stuck for far too long on 23 down; when I finally figured it out I had to look up the first known use of “prez;” turns out it was 1686. So I can’t even grumble about the slang being a red herring.
I confidently started filling in ITALIANSANDWICH for the Maine clue before I realized that despite the ubiquitous nature of that food in state it’s not the speciality sandwich we are known for.
I was so confident in my answer of BYU as a university with international campuses that I didn’t even question what a RABGER was until it came time to check for mistakes.
@Robert Lately I’ve seen one story apartments referred to as flats in US listings, frequently with studio apartments being referred to as studio flats, but also with multi room apartments as well.
Despite the longest clues being 11 characters long there were a lot more multiple word answers than I was expecting. With just two proper names (of people) it was also a bit easier than I was expecting from a Friday puzzle but still had some trivia I had to find my way to. The skincare brand was new to me, for one.
@Liz B I feel like I haven’t thought about an icebox cake since I was a kid leafing through my grandmother’s cookbooks, but considering I love dunking cookies until they’re soggy I’m surprised I’ve never made a cake that pretty much relies on that concept.
@Shan I also had PALID and PASTOR, only I didn’t realize pallid was spelled incorrectly in my attempted solve.
@Apeksha They needed the Y so the circled letters could spell ANDY as he tunnels out of the puzzle. It drove me nuts trying to figure out a graphic reason for the unchecked square but there it is.
@Dave S Agreed, I felt like I was gliding through this one, like there was a really pleasant flow of switching between across and down and having those little aha moments thanks to a letter or two. It was a crunchy week for me so this was a welcome change.
@Steven M. Seth Meyers would definitely have something to say about it. I think he might have a self imposed moratorium on responding to people who call him out for saying Legos instead of Lego bricks.
@Steven M. I threw in Nuprin before realizing it wasn’t nearly old enough to be associated with the first sitcom, but it was the first outdated analgesic brand I thought of other than Bromo-Seltzer, which would have had too few letters as just bromo.
@Roberto The only time I’ve heard it mentioned is in the context of the saying “numb as a hake,” meaning a person who is particularly stupid. After a bit of reading it seems like the European hake species are used mostly for food, the Pacific hake are processed into other products like imitation crab, and the hake off the east coast of North America are processed and also sold as fillets, but I’ve never encountered them myself.
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