Jason
UK
Ok, so I live 4 miles from EPSOM. Although correct that Epsom Salts are known worldwide, it isn’t table salt but Magnesium Sulfate (sulphate in the British spelling) used as a muscle relaxant in a hot bath or as a fertilizer for your plants. I don’t recommend using it on your steak unless you want to spend the night on the loo, due to its’ laxative effects. EPSOM was a spa town in the 1700’s although little remains today. The Assembly Rooms, once a place to Take the Waters.. is now a place to take in cheap beer as it is inhabited by a national pub chain.
This one did me in after 133 days of solving. No blame, not a bad puzzle - just not on the same wavelength with the setter. Didn’t get the Or trick at any point and the clue’s didn’t spring to mind as they normally do. Little sad, but I’ll start again tomorrow. 133 to beat…
I liked the misdirect on Body of water near London. Being in the UK, you sorta Occam’s Razor it in the wrong way and make the assumption that it is the London you know best, which of course it isn’t. (Someone will now point out I have Occam’s Razor all wrong or that it doesn’t apply here, but so be it). By the way, Ockham is about 5 miles from here, and doesn’t have much more notable about it than being the birthplace of that problem solving principle.
Lovely to see my NZ hometown boys (or near as can be - shout out to Te Awamutu from a Hamilton boy!) make the crossword with Split Enz making the cut. Definitely part of my teen years and the forerunner to Crowded house through Neil and Tim Finn. Check out “Six months in a leaky boat” which was banned in the UK as demotivational during the Falklands war…
@Oikofuge not Mysterious RBG, Notorious RBG! RIP, RBG!
@CCNY Y? Because we like you…. (This is an age test… people of a certain vintage know what comes next…
@Laura Stratton In the “Sunscreen” song - “Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, but in the end, it’s only with yourself”. I don’t compare my streaks with others. To maybe keep on a level with pure American culture, I allow myself to google for brands I have no chance of knowing as they are not part of my daily life or history. And American sportspeople. So these are my rules, and I’m good with them. I’m never going to be a tournament solver. Why should anyone else get to define the terms of my enjoyment?
… is that everything’s gonna be fine,fine,fine… … is that I haven’t got it all figured out just yet….
@Cherry if you don’t know where it’s from, Shakespeare is usually a good guess. Titania is queen of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon is her king…
@kilaueabart mama say mama saw ma ma coo sa… or something like that that MJ said..
Disappointed because, not knowing the American academic systems and tests I had LOST A BET and GRT (for general reasoning test). In the end I had to give up and lose my streak
@Michael Hendler the stream flows through the dale of Demor… where they have the Demor Eels…
@Rory curious as to whether anything can be rent any other way - always “rent asunder”. Like having a non-massive heart attack. Verbally, it just doesn’t happen. Why is it that we are so habitually bound to use these words in pairs almost to the point of them not sounding right if we don’t?
@Jon Onstot whereas if you are an aging farmer named McDonald, it is EIEIO….
@Nom De Plume So I’m just old enough to remember Dr. Finlay’s Casebook as a re-run no doubt as it is from the BBC in 1962, and I was born in 1968. I remember my Mum watching it in the 70’s in NZ. In this case, Dr Finlay was a medical man
I started with Salukis for the hounds with fine silky hair, although perhaps the long hair is limited to the ears and tail on those ones. Didn’t think of Borzois, but got to Afghans in the end…
With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue, the only thing I ever got from you was SORSORSORSORSOR
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