Francis
Minnesota
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Minnesota
@HeathieJ Consuming Ayn Rand can be hazardous to your mental health. I read "Atlas Shrugged" twice. Once in high school and once in college, and I'm still recovering. One thing I will say, though, is that Ayn Rand characters, unlike modern financiers, to their credit actually produced something: Roark produced architecture, Talbert produced rail traffic, D'Anconia produced silver, and Rearden produced steel. All current money masters do is move money around, buy a company to load it up with debt, and sell all the assets for profits, and impoverish somebody else. Nothing whatsoever is actually produced to back that wealth. We don't even live in an age where wealth actually does something. All it does today is produce more wealth, with nothing substantial to back it. Our entire economy is a pyramid scheme.
Now that I understand the new word SEXILE, I'm wondering.... Should I be worried that sometimes when I head to bed my wife has put a tie on our bedroom door. I never really thought about it before, but now....
@Jesse R. Maybe. And not soon enough. Not before I GOESBERSERK, losing even the ability to conjugate verbs.
My streak is now 1!!!!! I really thought I was going to flop two days in a row. You'd think, given that I've been sexiled for some time now, I would have figured that one out. But no. Also took me forever to get ANTITAX because when I run the alphabet in my head, I almost always daydream at "X". Good puzzle, and I thought the theme was hilarious. But I'm a little confused around MENDERLINES. I see how it works for the questions in the clue, but I'm not sure "underlines" means anything in relation to the clue. Can anyone shed some light?
@Steven M. I find that stunningly fast. I was almost four times slower. Most of it was in the squares on near the eastern boundary, including SEXILE, PLANE, DONICELY, and ANTITAX.
@Andrzej I think you just gave a great example of crossword quicksand! The entry of the very reasonable STOOD tilted the rest of your solving, but not enough to make it blindingly obvious that STOOD was wrong. I think that's the very essence of the concept of how a reasonable mistake can make a puzzle quickly difficult.
@Eva H. Why don’t you construct some without proper nouns and just good old American words?
Lost my streak. There were just too many squares that I couldn't come up with the right vowel. I looked all over and finally decided I didn't deserve the star and did a puzzle reveal. I had GMeN rather than GMAN. Never notice that ITeL wasn't right. Not my night.
Engaging puzzle. Didn't notice it was a Weintraub production until I came to the comments. Another day of *almost* having my heinie handed to me. I don't know how I came up with a T at the crossing of BABYGROOT/STAX, because I didn't recognize either answer, not even a little bit. But there is where I got the unexpected happy music. Never heard of MEWS, not sure why TATA is British, luv, never heard of PLEBE week, never thought of Eggshell as a SHEEN, I pay no attention to car logos, so ACURA was a surprise, TMINUSZERO doesn't sound very NASAy to me, and I've never had the bubbly chocolate concoction known as AERO. I don't know anything about Florida cities like SOUTH BEACH other than I never want to be in any of them (humidity hater, cold, crisp air lover). Never heard of SOUTH BEACH other than that's where LeBron took his talents to, at one point. It's been a long time since I've heard anybody RADIO ahead, but maybe that's because I stopped watching cop shows a long time ago. But, all on me. All on me. So, other than those 10 or 15 problems, I found it very straightforward and easy, just like everyone else here.
@Eva H. This isn’t politics. It’s sociology.
@Chris Try not to let the comments bum you out. We only compete with ourselves here, not each other. If you’re happy, stay happy.
There are some puzzles, this one most definitely, when I think the constructor constructs sets of several words of a given length: a set of three letter words, a set of letter words, etc. Then for each set this demonic constructor will construct two or three *that can be clued the same way*. I mean, how else can you explain 9A [Stopped lying]? After I saw SHUTUP wouldn't fit, (makes sense in my dark world), I thought aha, AROSE! No, STOOD...much later SATUP. Just a masterpiece of ambiguity. Lots of fun.
Welcome to the NYT Crossword Puzzle Complaint Hotline. Please press "one" to say the puzzle was too difficult, or press "two" to say the puzzle was too easy.
@Darren Someone once told me they loved every second of a movie, but it was too long.
@DawnW Me, too. But I never noticed how bad I was at spelling it.
@Roberta Why not make a joke? It's not like there's anything we can do about it. We're only along for the ride. It's not our country, it's not our lives to do with as we wish. We live only to serve our billionaire overlords, to make them ever more properous. Writing our congressmen doesn't work. Writing our senators doesn't work. Appealing to the judicial system doesn't work. Praying doesn't work, and Lord knows I've tried. We might as well laugh as we await our demise.
@Francis Come on, people, that was funny. Don’t make me “like” my own post. 😀
@Lewis You’ve found a way to make it a different kind of chalk. The perfect remedy for those who aren’t challenged enough.
@Andrzej I love the alertness of dogs, especially puppies. It's like they've blocked out everything else other than their current focus of attention. By chance I've had a string of older dogs. My daughter and son-in-law have two genuine puppies, and the energy is just phenomenal when you've been away from it for a while.
@Emma Congratulations! Solving your first rebus is the second greatest feeling in the world.
@Nancy I don’t get the tie, either. Makes no sense at all to me.
@Bigbee Half the commenters think they’re getting too damn hard. The other half think they’re getting too damn easy.
@Matt These days my better half and I mostly go out with kids and grandkids to eat, not so often when it's just the two of us. So, yeah, it's been a while. Maybe I should get on that.
@Paul Turner I have terrific memories of those countdowns. I think I was in the third grade when the Mercury missions started. The delays, wow, they were so annoying. Like I was going to have to be walking to school when it actually took off? And I had to hope the TVs would be on at the schools? And this was going to be my last chance to see it ever in my life? I got to be careful or I'll flip entirely into Old Man "when I was your age, sonny....".
@HeathieJ I don't know. That's never happened before.
@Bill No need for alarm (clock)—I’m already up and out of bed.
@Suzanne You can get support to restore your streak. They’re glad to do it. Cost them basically nothing.
Right off the bat I have to ask... 1A...isn't ARTS kind of a broad answer for two very specific art forms in the clue? I get it, it's Friday, but it's hard for me to know how anyone could have confidently enter ARTS given the clue. Maybe there's more I need to learn about crosswords? This is why I find puzzles like this difficult--there are just so many ways an answer can go. Another example, 9A [Stopped lying]. AROSE, STOOD? No, SAT UP. Not really the kind of lying I wish so dearly would stop, but I guess we take what we can get. And of course the oft mentioned below GOESBERSERK, or GOESBELLYUP, or GOESBONKERS. I found footing quite hard to come by. I guess that's what makes it a good puzzle?
@Matt Waiter! I'll have what he's having in the last paragraph. Make it a double.
@Marc A. Leaf At some point I thought I could lean on that Z enough to fill in the ERO after the Z. I think that was a quantum leap in my solving, that I began to see parts of the answer even if I didn't have the whole answer.
@SBK 😂 Yeah, that pretty much says it all. I'd love to have some stats like "What percentage of your full answers without crosses turned out to be right?". Or, "What was the longest time period with no activity whatsoever, i.e. befuddlement time?"
@SBK Well, I have to admit, a "Black Mirror" episode with anything remotely approaching happy is a bad bet. I also have to admit that the dark drama and humor seems to help me in some mysterious way. Like the Blues in music are seemingly cathartic, though they've not helped me much. Hard to know how to navigate life.
@Bob 😂 Or as writers for an epic episode of "Cheers" might say about [Nelson Mandela and Charlie Chaplin] "two people who've never been in my kitchen".
@BB It seemed to me that many of the answers were especially hard to spell, with the two or three vowels a seeming possibility. And with psilocybin, we even have a "y", which, from my recall could have been the third letter or the seventh letter, or both, or neither.
@Times Rita This should come as absolutely no comfort to you whatsoever, as I frequently trip before reaching the finish line, but that's exactly where my problems was. No puzzle is easier than its toughest cross.
@Al in Pittsburgh Nice. Thanks. I tend towards pessimism, and it's nice to hear someone talk solid sense.
Wow. I thought there was going to be an uproar about REALEST.
@Marshall Walthew Why, solving a Saturday puzzle, of course. What else? ;-)
@Eric Yeah, it’s a bit of a reach from the ore to fuel rods. Amazing amount of technology to enrich the 235.
Hey emus. I tried to write a very nice, nostalgic reply to RozzieGrandma about playing marbles. That's all I wrote. That and a congratulations to her. Apparently, though, the emus thought it shouldn't be allowed. Can the puzzle team PLEASE give us some indication of what the hell is going on concerning what is denied and what will be accepted? The "quiz" from a while back was useless. There was not one poster who could relate that "quiz" to what happens in real life. I want you to tell me exactly what was wrong with the post I made. I'm sure I'm speaking for everyone one of the PAYING posters here when I saw that we have all been utterly stunned by posts simply not appearing.
@Scott You’re not the only one. Scroll down.
@Bob “Summers” can be people who sum. CPAs are people who sum.
@Nancy J. I humbly accept your deeper wisdom.
@SBK 😀 Maybe you should write for "Black Mirror"?
Illigitimati non carborundum.
@dk Love your willingness to explain Newtonian physics. Here’s a good one I think. Does a box of parakeets weigh the same when the parakeets fly as it does when they perch?
@David A couple of eagle eyes noticed. Nice catch!
@JohnWM That never occurred to me! Thanks for bringing it up. As a one time quantum chemist, I ran across ab initio. (Took me forever for spell check to stop “correcting “ me with that term.) Do you also know it from quantum calculations?