Ed
Halifax, Nova Scotia
262
Comments
0.223
Avg Sentiment
95
Positive
113
Neutral
54
Negative
Halifax, Nova Scotia
C% enjoyable.
Nobody expects the Spanish imposition!
Abysm prevented me from solving but it's in the dictionary so I guess I can live with that. However, non-words like mwahaha, woah, erm, eww and ums, while gettable, were downright annoying, verging on amateurish and "wait, what" wasn't much better. Limn was the best part of an otherwise sketchy puzzle.
Beware of grids bearing Greek.
i don't know how to break it to you folks but Lola was a man. I'd bet my cherry cola on that.
Nice puzzle with fresh fill. totally devoid of stale crosswordese. Kudos to the constructors.
She-eep was baaaaad.
The author of this fine puzzle was inspired by her father's puns. It's clearly time to give dad jokes the dignity they deserve. They are not to be laughed at.
Fun puzzle. I'd never heard of a sine bar but now I know it's the sine qua non for measuring or setting angles. But I guess I've just gone off on a tangent.
Best Tuesday puzzle I've seen in a long time. Good fun.
Nice puzzle with a lot of pleasantly tricky stuff. And I'll bang a gong for that great T. Rex clue that the editors scrapped.
I had never heard of midinettes, Brazilian soccer player Marta or the novels The Naked Sun and Tara Road but I was able to get them with the crosses and I know about them now. They were gettable with the crosses. All crosswords contain trivia and today's puzzle had, to me at least, good trivia and very little boring crosswordese. There wasn't an Oreo or epee in sight and thank Hecate for that.
@Chris I just did an enjoyable crossword puzzle and was not required to donate money to any cause. By your logic, any time I face one of the many puzzles that promote Oreos it would be an extortionate attempt to make me buy a package of those cloying comestibles.
I guess I have to admire the audacious concept of teaming one sublimely talented trio with a ridiculously overexposed troika of triviality. Ah well, parts of this puzzle were pretty good.
@Steve L On a related topic, how are you folks doing down there in Baja Canada?
I thought this was a funny concept and fun to work on. I'm surprised at all the complaints but people pay their money and they can boo if they want to.
Nice puzzle. I'm 71 and had a good laugh when I figured out the answer to 56 across.
I enjoyed the rectitudinousness of this puzzle.
@MikeWhat behooved you to say that?
I enjoyed this puzzle even though. as a lifelong Canadian sports fan, 27D and 45D were painful to answer.
@Mike Looks like you're trying to curry favor with that comment.
Enjoyable enough. I'm going to get nitpicky about going pro. Most athletes are already professionals before they play their first games in MLB, the NBA and the NHL They've already been playing for pay in the minor leagues.
@Pendant Certs was a candy mint, Certs was a breath mint.
@Mike Sage fright? Just wait until you see Rosemary's baby.
This was a fun one. Lots of clever answers, especially nepotism and proletariat. I liked this so much I'm not even going to complain about Oreo pies.
Nice puzzle and I think the constructors really rocked it with their original clue for 23A.
This was a nice challenge. The puzzle went much better for me after I gave up on the concept of people caroming from door to door.
@Marc Ah, but that's not real baseball. Maybe at this point I should admit I think pitchers should still have to bat.
Very interesting. An hour ago I had the second-most recommended post here and now it's gone. I applauded the appearance of a properly named body of water ans wondered if a regressive tax might be applied as a result. Now the comment's been removed. What's up with that?
I believe Sam Corbin is a Canadian, but she must be a city gal if she didn't realize there have been 4-H clubs in Canada for decades. I belonged to one in Nova Scotia.
@B Buck O'Neil is a baseball answer but his inclusion here is also history. O'Neil was one of the great Black players cruelly denied a chance to play in the majors.
@Andrzej The mere fact that there were a lot of proper nouns didn't bother me because they've always been a feature of crossword puzzles and hey, I like pub trivia. But what was inexcusable was having five names -- Ripa, Renato, Eazye, Redd and Marlo -- being entertainment trivia and on top of that was the Star Wars force choke, which was alien to me. It's a Saturday, it should be a challenge, but don't have so much trivia from one category. On the bright side, no Oreos were detected.
@Daryl I've been doing these crosswords for 45 years but don't share your misgivings. I didn't see anything here that bothered me.
@Barry Ancona I've never understood the enthusiasm some puzzlers express for grid art. I couldn't care less about it. Just give me good words.
@BJ Seen that, Bean there.
@FrancisI got hung up on that too but Tyson's so well-known I wouldn't call it a natick.
@pmom It's not a natick. Sancho Panza appears in these puzzles from time to time and, while the clue for runes was a tough one, it wasn't unfair for a Friday.
@Steve L When I was about five I saw a gaudily dressed piano player on TV named, or so I thought, Liver Archie.
That was fun. Given the constructor's self-imposed "one I" grid restriction and creative theme I won't even complain about the Oreo.
@Sebastian Nice post but as another non-U.S. resident I'll politely disagree with your complaint about naticks. I certainly didn't know anything about Alaina Urquhart but, with all the attention the mostly execrable U.S. Supreme Court has received in recent years, we've all heard of Elena Kagan. one of the few members of that august institution who is actually compos mentis. As for Gilda Radner, I don't think she's that obscure these days, but that's from my 70-year-old perspective. Megan and Mirren? Both are so well known there's no natick there.
Great debut Bryan. I was ready to grumble about what I considered an overly obscure author as the answer to 18A but then I looked up Greg Egan on Wikipedia. His books sound fascinating and his string of awards is impressive. I like a puzzle that teaches me some worthwhile stuff.
Good puzzle, really liked the factual answers like kultur, Leone, Brexit, Allie B. Latimer -- never heard of her but a good crossword always teaches you something. As for Dock Ellis, the LSD no-hitter is just one of the two historic events that will forever enshrine his name in baseball lore. The other one is being the pitcher who gave up Reggie Jackson's mammoth home run in the 1971 All-Star game when Reggie propelled one into the light tower atop Tiger Stadium's right-field roof.
50A sounds familiar, kinda rings a bell.
@dutchiris I also ardently questioned ardency.
Excellent puzzle. It nice to see an appearance by the criminally underrated Paul Pena, who wrote Jet Airliner. Steve Miller's version was great but Pena's original is better: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjr5U7g6aiA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjr5U7g6aiA</a>
@Mike Maybe you should dial that down a bit.
I've liked just about every puzzle I've seen that Jeff Chen had a hand in. But not this snoozefest.
I loved the concept and the irrational (mathematically) but rational (thematically) linking of Hawking and Einstein. The rest was pretty easy for a Thursday but, hey, it's pi day, And thanks to Deb for that hilarious history of the Indiana Pi Bill.
@spurious Here's how it works. First, you saw down the tree. Then you saw it up. That's how we get our firewood around here.