Canard
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Rather than complain about the construction, I’d like to complain about the commenters who say something like, Really confusing and difficult, can’t believe it took me 15 minutes, which is 9 minutes longer than my usual Thursday.
A nitpick (but that’s what people who write footnotes do for a living): the author of The Raven would be Poe, EA!
I managed to solve this without having any idea about the theme - whenever there was a clue with a - I just skipped it. And then there were other entries that just made no sense, and I ignored them too. Now after reading this commentary, I still haven’t bothered to go back over it in detail, and I don’t see why I should - it seems arbitrary and tricky. It reminds me of my unfavorite puzzle of all time, where some of the structure was based upon moves you’d make playing chess. I see that a lot of you serious puzzle solvers love this, but I don’t see the point at all. How about a pattern where the third letter of every other word spells out the names of the planets in order? It’s like playing a game where no one tells you the rules. If you like that, great, but maybe this type of puzzle should come with a warning label for those of us who just want to do a little crossword and not get stuck in an alternative universe. Or just do this weird stuff on Thursday.
As a Boomer who hasn’t played a video game since Pong and Tank, I obviously had to jump over some of these clues. Of course, that is also the case with all sports (except for the Alou brothers), television shows after 1974, pop music after 1986, science, and vehicles. I’d like to see more puzzles that emphasize art history, classic rock, 19th and early 20th century literature, boats, and classic cinema. And please hold the clues about hip hop until after I die.
@Lewis We only knew this because we had friends visiting from Denmark last week, and they mentioned this!
@Lewis. Ha! I had no clue about any of the video game references, but enthalpy was pretty easy for me, as an architect thinking about thermal comfort zones.
@Marshall Walthew. I thought it was WESANDERSON.
@Andrzej. Baht is not a loan word. It certainly means nothing in English. Maybe it does in Polish?
@HeathieJ Why don’t we put some calculus equations in the middle? Why don’t we ask people the arcana of yacht racing rules? How about the technical specs on Formula One race cars? Those would all be “puzzles “, just not intrinsic to crossword puzzles. You can work anything you want into a crossword, I guess, but there have been cases where the extraneous elements have really detracted from the experience for many of us. All I’m asking is just put a “contains arbitrary tricks” warning label on it, and many of us won’t waste our time.
@Leo I stopped with Tank, back when video games were in consoles in bars. Pac Man came along, I realized it would take at least $10 in quarters to get good at it, and that I’d rather put that money into beer. 50 years later, I think that decision to stop playing video games has probably saved me about five years worth of time.
@Pilvion. Enthalpy is also known to HVAC engineers and architects - if they were paying attention in class.
@Selective Walrus My personal best Tuesday ever, which does something to help assuage my ego after last Friday’s.
@Andrzej. If I walk into a store in the US and ask for pierogi, or a croissant, or pizza, they'll know what I'm talking about. The word is used in English speech. If I say "baht", they'll have no idea what I'm saying. The word is just not used in English. According to your logic, any word uttered by an English speaker in their home country immediately becomes a loan word once it is uttered.
@Andrzej. There is a convention in English that when you use a word from a foreign language, you italicize it - as a way of signifying that it is not an English word. That should apply here. And the fact that you changed the spelling of dollar is a tip-off: if English speakers changed the spelling of baht to bot that would make a stronger case that it is a word in English. I still hold to my point that by your definition, any time an English speaker utters a foreign word, it becomes and English word. I think that this is a good illustration of what the internet is for - so people on opposite sides of the globe can argue about inconsequential things! We need to discuss this over beers - cheers!
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