Beldegraded
Belgrade
@Peter “tea” used in this context is a very new way of using it, originating from the US and used a lot on social media. The very fact you don’t know that tells me you’re making some good decisions in your life, so don’t stress it too much
I’m sorry but that ‘bench press?’ was so brutal… even after I was forced to reveal it, it took me a second to understand it. Rough Friday IMO
@Tain totally agree. This one was horrendous for British/international solvers. I always thought there was a quiet agreement that proper nouns/trivia should not cross over one another out of respect to both non-US players and the genre itself (ie one can solve true unknowns by using other words). The Chicago train system/candy one was just awful construction in my eyes.
Nice grid, the only issue I have is with the ‘horseshoe enthusiasts?’ clue. I thought that the rule is that a question mark means that it’s cryptic ie it’s not literally just people who are enthused by horseshoes. After reading the article though (and I confess I’d never heard of farriers before), it looks like it really just is literally that, and so the ‘?’ really threw me off. I would’ve just left it and tried to get everything around it.
@Mark S agree on all fronts. That south-east corner was a total mess, two obscure humans and some sort of test, all mixed in together. Some ghastly clues too. Shoddy work imo, even if the theme was solid and I got it midway
Solid puzzle but I think the cryptic-y ones were overreaching a little and were too obscure in many cases. Dial them down a bit and it’d’ve been a solid Wednesday puzzle.
@Sarah totally agree, yesterday’s was like a (badly constructed) Tuesday and today’s was like an easy Monday…
‘The BEEB’ is very much a British channel, not an English one. Sloppy.
Solid Saturday but did anyone else feel like the 1d ‘“Really, now!” clue was totally wrong for AWCMON? I’d expect it to be something like ‘NEEDITASAP’ or something of that ilk. ‘Aw c’mon’ is used in different circumstances ie when trying to get someone who’s moaning to do something (quickly or otherwise).
@Beth i only got IM Pei because it was in a Sunday a couple of weeks ago. The crossover of ALDA and VIGODA was really silly though - just sloppy craftsmanship IMO. I had to try all reasonable letters one by one until it hit.
@Sonja I can only guess that it’s an Americanism: they so rarely actually see the full cheese itself (only ever seeing it when gooey, fresh from the oven) that they don’t connect it to once being a solid cheese. I remember seeing on IronChef a good few years ago that ground/minced beef was called ‘hamburger’.
@Josh I like to think I have a reasonably wide ranging vocab, but I really have never heard or read ‘farriers’ ever, despite having had a decade-long obsession with fantasy in my youth that surely included lots of horses being rehooved after arduous quests etc. I was also surprised in the comments that loads of people seemed to think it was easy. I guess sometimes these words manage to slip by.
@Anne it’s still incorrect. One doesn’t say in any language ‘I will eat one panini’ but people do say ‘let’s go eat panini’. It’s a word that at its heart refers to the plural, and the clue was just plain wrong.
@Here’s Johnny agreed. It totally fell apart in that section. Never heard of either of the downs, and even ALF for me is a stretch (I’m 41 and i don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of him outside of NYT crosswords).
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