Bob
CVNP, Ohio
I had no problem with the puzzle showing up on my PC browser. Sorry for the people who did, especially if you have a long streak riding on it or you're trying to get the best time possible. Once you get past those issues though, hopefully you can join me in appreciating the sheer genius it takes to create a puzzle like this. I can't imagine trying to find one phrase that has the right orientation/repetition of letters that is also 'crossword length', much less finding several that all fit the criteria. Most impressive, Mr. Seigel.
@Roberta Same thing. That combined with Sir/Ser (thanks George RR Martin) and Minorca/Menorca added a good 10 minutes to my game.
@TJ This one was the toughest in a good while. I've seen my time averages steadily tick down over the years, I'd say over 90% of my times this year were lower than my historic average. This one took me about 40% longer than my average Saturday, and probably close to twice as long as most Saturdays this year. But I had fun with it, I didn't need to look up any pop culture references that were too old or too new for me.
I struggled with the stack of pancakes clue. 'Cold' worked better for me for 2 of the answers (Runs Cold, Stops Cold), but I wasn't familiar with the term 'Cold iron' for a golf club. I tried making 'Wedge', 'Sand', or 'Pitch'. And Google came up with a definition for 'Cold Stack' with regards to pancakes, so it took me a few extra minutes to figure it out. Great puzzle otherwise!
@Strudel Dad Interesting trivia, I could have sworn hot magenta was a thing in the 80s when I was doing most of my crayon coloring. Always liked the color and the name of the color, that's part of why I was able to figure it out with only a couple letters helping me out.
Took a minute to fix my NE corner. I had AWAY for 'Moved', and MOPE for 'Lament'. This gave me YEETS for 'Crash sites', which is a bit of a stretch on modern lingo in which physics rapidly and humorously transports a person from site A to site B. But AMPILED made no sense for gift cards, so I had to rework the corner. Have to save my YEETing for the Abrupt Chaos subreddit, I guess.
@UE Same, that cost me 6 minutes at the end.
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