Lauchlin
Nova Scotia
One person’s “mostly accessible” trivia is another’s impossibly obscure trivia. 15 minutes in and I only have a small handful of answers filled in and it feels like the trivia is coming from an alternate reality. I don’t think I’ve been this stymied by a puzzle since I started doing them regularly. I came to Wordplay to check to see if there was a hidden theme I just wasn’t picking up on, but nope. Just another tough Saturday to lose my streak on.
Put me down as one of the people who loved the math gimmick and thought the number clues were all really fun, but there’s so much weird obscure-to-me fill in this that the puzzle in unsolvable — almost as bad as yesterday’s. I’ve gone from my longest ever winning streak to a two day losing streak. Tough weekend!
I immediately plugged in CRYPTOZOOLOGIST when I saw the revealer clue, but when I started getting the theme clues and saw they were misspelled, I was sure I’d have to revisit that and change it to CRTYPOZOOLOGIST to acknowledge they were typos. I was surprised when the victory music played when I entered my last letter without going back to that. Upon reflection, it’s obvious that the joke is meant to be pseudoscientists seeing things that aren’t really there. The scare quotes around “sightings” should have made that clear to me. Now that I understand the theme, I like it. However, a minor edit for clarity to something like “false sightings” or “disputed sightings” would have made the theme much more legible and probably avoided all the comment section grumbling.
@Lynn If it’s the one I’m thinking of, that was a very different execution. The whole puzzle was about Whac-A-Mole. The grid represented the game board with several “holes”, one of which had the mole in it.
@Katie I confidently filled in WHATSUPDOG on my first pass and was so pleased with myself. 😂
This was a great puzzle. Highlighting the other half of the missing clues would have helped a lot, sure. My main struggle wasn’t with the theme questions (I read the instructions, so that was fine) but with the piles of obscure-to-me trivia.
I assume it’s an indicator of a well-constructed theme puzzle that I never would have finished this puzzle without the theme answers providing a way in to all the trivia. Without the theme, this would have fit right in with one of those frustratingly hostile streak-ruining Saturdays, but knowing the edges had to consist of only seven possible syllables meant I came in only a couple minutes over my average Wednesday despite never having heard of too many of the answers. Well done!
@Steven M. To geek out and embarrass myself a bit, in Tolkien goblins and orcs are the same thing. Despite what Peter Jackson did in the movies, Tolkien meant “goblin” to just be what hobbits called orcs. In reality, it’s probably just because “goblin” was a word children would recognize so seemed more appropriate when writing The Hobbit, but in that book he wrote, “Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin.”
@Ian Mac Eochagáin “Tea” is slang for gossip. It originated in Black drag culture and was largely popularized by the reality show Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
@Andrzej Regrettably, you’re right and it’s an intentionally disrespectful choice. In a baffling decision I can only imagine was a compromise between writers who wanted to spell correctly and aging editors resistant to change, the New York Times manual of style allows diacritics only in words and names from French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Also, only diacritics that are common in those languages can be used in the paper.
@Vaer Is it possible that people who have been doing the crossword religiously for years are simply getting better at it rather than the puzzles getting significantly easier? Inevitably, any time I struggle with obscure trivia in a puzzle and take well over my average time to complete it, I come here and see a chorus of commenters shouting that the puzzle was too easy.
@Chris G There are a pair of ELS in “jolly” as well.
This was a tough but fun Saturday. I motored through everything but the northwest corner where on my first pass I had C*I*** filled in for 2D (“Theater kids, e.g.”), immediately popped in CRINGE, and then didn’t think about it again until I had the rest of the puzzle filled in except for a nearly empty northwest corner. A confluence of words in that corner I’ve never heard or read anywhere didn’t help either (BUSS, UVEAS, FERB), but once I figured out that I was unnecessarily bullying theater kids, they eventually fell into place.
@Jane Wheelaghan “Double down” is a term from blackjack. It happens where the player puts down an initial bet, sees the first cards they’re dealt, and then doubles their initial bet (by putting more money down on the table). The phrase is used outside of gambling to mean someone is recommitting to a position or action with more intensity.
@Steve “Sesquipedalian” literally translates to “foot and a half long” but it’s used to describe long multisyllabic words.
@Nora I think the only issue is that everyone, including the Academy Awards themselves, refers to the awards by the year they’re handed out. I guess it’s supposed to be intentional misdirection when the crossword provides the wrong year, but I see why it annoys people.
@Warren B. I think people just struggle with different puzzles. This was the most difficult Thursday for me in ages, taking me six minutes longer than my Thursday average. I found a lot of the full very obscure and had an unusual amount of trial and error.
@Ed Depends where you are in Nova Scotia! PEI is north of Halifax, but it’s due west of Cape Breton with New Brunswick on the other side. If you’re in Yarmouth, New Brunswick is north and PEI is on the other side to the east! Somewhat awkward clueing, but close enough for crossword work, I guess.
@Andrzej As a non-American, my main exposure to hearing about the Alamo was seeing the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure as a kid and then crosswords.
@Dennis You aren’t supposed to enter any rebuses, despite what the answer key says. The rebuses wouldn’t make sense for the down crosses.
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