MartyS

I love reading Deb’s column and sighing “oh, ah, I see”. For this non-local, non-native language solver it simply became too convoluted. Pick your fights and know when to throw in the towel. I’ll be back tomorrow.

I really enjoyed the pacing of this. Audibly nose-gasped when I saw the grid. It sent this solver on a nice journey around the outer edges, working his way to the center for the final entries. Good way to start a Sunday, thank you. Only needed help with TONI STONE. Now, baseball… that’s the one where you try to throw a ball through a netted hoop, right?

Having never even had the inkling of a desire to tie a pair of narrow pieces of board to my feet and since I make a mission of avoiding anything remotely connected to sports involving balls or winter weather, this went entirely over my head. Am honestly surprised by how many solvers seem to know about skiing signs. In my world, skiing is wildly elitist and something the 0.1’ers go away to do in the mountains in winter. I know it’s all down to my narrow mind, but had to drop out of this one. Will be back tomorrow. At least there was no OSLO today ;)

The International Herald Tribune introduced me to the NYT crosswords years ago. What a wonderful cultural insight the puzzles provided and how stumped I felt already by Tuesday and Wednesday most weeks. Fast forward 20 odd years, and I have slowly worked my way “up” to actually being able to solve a whole weeks, sometimes with the wonderful nudge-help from Deb’s columns later in the week. Yay, me…. Today, however, I was plummeted back into the feeling of my very first attempts from the early naughts in IHT. Simply too many answers I had absolutely no way of carving out. The greatest puzzles are the unsolved ones, I guess. Loved the heteronyms. I had to lay down my king, though and will be back for Saturday.