Patrick
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California
This is the best puzzle in quite a while! The best ones where you get almost nothing on the first pass, but then somehow you find it all!
Loved this one, especially NÚMERO.
The gimmick here seemed weak. A crossword is a crossword because you have multiple ways to know what goes in each box. Here, for the first and last letters of the gimmick across answers, you have the down clue, and the weak signal that the full across word is some acceptable crossword answer, but no other pattern. That seems like 1.5 ways to me.
Am I too much of a curmudgeon if I complain that there are letters here (the last of the 4 "exits" in each roundabout) that are only part of one answer? I thought the central structure of a crosswors is that all entries are covered by two clues.
@Jess quit being such a NENE sayer!
Brilliant. This was hard but I felt at every turn like persistence would pay off, and it did! SEA tac was brutal!
Wow, this kid is sure gunning to take Shortz's job when he retires!
I got it from the across clues, but can someone explain 13 down ("Brief blowup" is SETTO)?
@Jake G Thanks for your comment! Good-spirited pedantry is fun. It's what brought us Wikipedia.
@Boris Somehow I disagree (but maybe because somewhere in my brain I heard of GOREY though I had no idea what he did). Lots of weird names I had never heard of but with a lot of pencilling it worked out!
@SP I got lucky in knowing the German name for Latvia is "Lettland"!
@Barry Ancona very interesting, thanks! Part of why I'm complaining is that last time I did so, commenters pointed out that I had missed a hint in a spoiler clue that gave additional information on the gimmick/theme entries. Here, no spoiler though.
@Fact Boy I was wondering if this was really the answer for this reason. Surprised this clue was used especially as the authors appear to be in German-speaking Switzerland!
Should SAFEWORD be here? I'm not offended by the idea, but isn't the fun of such things that they are for use in a specific context? Much as I love it, I struggle to think of anything less erotic than the NYT crossword.
@Nancy J. Agreed! The pencil is your friend. You don't have to be totally sure to progress. Take a stab! If it helps you solve a crossing clue that's s good sign. If not, erase it.
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