Me.
Here
@Isabeau that nonsensical crochet clue had me utterly stumped until I remembered that it's 2025 and apparently words no longer have meaning, especially wrt fabric. As a knitter and weaver, I've recently been baffled to find that even clothing manufacturers seem to be using those words interchangeably. One company keeps referring to their athletic fabrics as "woven," when, of course, they're knits. Knits stretch and move with the body, so they're great for athletic clothing. I don't want woven panel on the sides of my leggings - it won't move right. I think they've decided that "woven" is classier, but it's just misleading and wrong. As someone who thinks about fabric and materials quite a lot, it's baffling to find I live in a world where even clothing merchants don't!
Man, I spent a long time trying to understand the word "re-indeer" and what it had to do with foxy ladies!
Kabab kebab. Tinman tinmen. Oof.
@Neil honestly, this Yank can't keep em all straight either. I get em on the crosses.
As someone who spends a lot of time playing with wool, I strongly object to characterizing LANOLIN as having a foul odor.
@Vaer at various times, the puzzle has erased all my work after I've filled it in, telling me that I've not done the puzzle at all. I fill it in again and then it tells me that my new record time for a Saturday is the three minutes it took me to write the answers in. I've decided that the times when I fall asleep and end up with a nine or ten hour puzzle are the universe's way of balancing out the 3 minute Saturdays! Nature is healing! :D
What on earth is a unity candle?!?
@Steve L naw, man. Wordplay requires understanding and playing off the meaning of the words. This just kinda rubbed related things against one another and preeningly thought rather highly of itself.
@Andrzej a gimme for me too... Until I tried to spell it!
Well,that one *felt* easy, but I'll never know the true numbers since it clocked me at 9:08:38 - a tally that includes my full night's sleep between doing a few clues yesterday and then finishing this morning. I have tried and tried, but I cannot figure out how to stop the puzzle from counting after I hit the stop button. Does anyone else have a fail-proof system? I generally play on the web page, since I use it to fall asleep and I don't want to have to scroll through page after page of the world on fire just before I go to bed!
Oh come on. There are so many correct ways to clue ONE, but a countdown ends at *zero*!
The photo choice is, obviously, to make us all happy that the clue for 54D wasn't "site of the 1993 fencing world championship where Germany beat Romania for gold in women's foil."
@Francis the photo shows the moment when zita funkenhauser (ger) beat Laura badea to win gold. The event took place in 54D. I will admit, I looked it up because it has been a looooong time since I saw any of those blue-stripe Adidas shoes. When little other info is available, shoes are an excellent way to tell the era of a fencing photo.
@JB idk. Seems like a shipbon which everyone had a companion.
@Joe P I've been slowly working my way back on Thurs-sat puzzles. I'm about 10 years away from that one and suspected that would be from a very different style. I didn't, however, think I'd be *completely* shut out in my first pass. Woof. Good luck!
@Barry Ancona I mean, every kid *and* every parent knows that you can fudge "one" by adding other increments "one half" "one quarter" "one onehundreth" "one gazillionth" "one ameliabedelianth" etc. The end isn't one, it's zero.
@Darren right? I absolutely loled. Can't decide if this is citable proof for Team Down and Back or purely a case of fools rush in! :D For anybody who wants to stick an oar in, your opinion on this matter only counts if you do spend a bit of time in the water. You might still be on one side or another, but if you don't get that there are Reasons to support each you're not actually *in* the discussion.
@Barry Ancona you're not counting down to one, you're counting down to ignition. Who cares about one? One isn't the event! If we say that one, which precedes the event, is the aim of the countdown, then surely two, which also precedes the event, is equally the end. Ditto three. Etc.
@Max in that system, the term for two lengths is two laps.
@UE I had exactly the same problem.
@Mark completely agree. On a weekday morning, I don't want the puzzle to take up my whole day. And, frankly, that goes for weekends, too, so I'm glad that at least the Sunday one is available a little earlier! I often get it started in Saturday evening so I'll have more Sunday morning free for, well, Sunday morning! (having the monday puzzle available earlier feels like a waste, but I wouldn't mind having the Saturday puzzle on Friday evening!)
@Name2 one would think, but it has not yet proved so easy.
@J I haven't said nay until getting to this comment, but I'll say nay now. I understood it. But the cluing was poorly done and I'm now having to choose whether to continue wasting my morning flyspecking an unpleasant experience or just walk away with the darned thing.
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