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California
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California
I am a native speaker of American English and consider myself a pretty decent crossworder nowadays (Wednesday best/average are 5:53/11:51), but this one took me an incredibly frustrating 26:36, without looking anything up. I echo the sentiments of others; too many proper nouns that are tougher for millienials like myself. The only saving grace for me was figuring out the perimeter schtick.
I thought I had everything right and couldn't for the life of me figure out where I went wrong — I begrudingly looked up the answer for 63-Across because it looked funky. It was then I realized that I misread 53-Down ("Flings") as "Filings" — this is what got me to change CASES to CASTS and wrap everything up. I don't know if that was intentional, but I found it quite uncanny that misreading that clue by one letter caused a one-letter error in the solve that fit the misread clue.
@Comet The misspelling would have been fine if the clue made it clearer (like "Governatah"); otherwise, hard agree.
@Name2 Part of what makes the NYT Crossword the NYT Crossword is the repeated use of signature clues, especially OREO. The other examples listed are often used in construction because they are short and contain As and Es, which typically facilitate cross-answers better than the other vowels. If you want some variety, branch out and play puzzles from other publications — but don't be surprised when you see some overlap.
@Katie With a title like "Power Grid", there is kind of an implication that there would be some sort of theme that related to said title.
@Hanson Because he's a crossword phenom whose work has appeared several times in the NYT, including his debut puzzle at the ripe old age of 15.
Happy to have set a personal best for a Tuesday puzzle on this great puzzle with a completion time of 3 minutes, 33 seconds :)
Absolutely loved this puzzle (and was able to get the revealer and rebuses very quickly), but my one niggle as a 36-year-old is having TERI Garr and LON Chaney (two references outside of my generation) in close proximity to SNELL (which was another term I wasn't immediately familiar with) — took way more time than I would have liked combing through the puzzle and re-doing the rebuses multiple times thinking that was the problem. Still finished in under 21 minutes, but only after I read the comments to see where I had erred. Fantastic puzzle, nonetheless!
@Katie Those aren't particularly obscure, but IMMIX, RAKI, PIAMATERS are definitely not super common knowledge.
@Barry Ancona Not just you. I banged it out in 8:49, which is a little more than half of my usual Saturday completion time.
@Man and 2 dogs This was way harder than a typical gimmicky Thursday — took me almost 21 minutes and had to look up a couple clues (compared to my last five Thursdays, which were all between 7 to 10 minutes, unassisted.)
@maddie mini magic This was way harder than a typical gimmicky Thursday — took me almost 21 minutes and had to look up a couple clues (compared to my last five Thursdays, which were all between 7 to 10 minutes, unassisted.)
@Sam Lyons I wasn't disappointed as much as I was simply surprised by how easy this was for a Saturday puzzle — I set a new personal Saturday best of 6:15, which I wasn't expecting at all.
@Jim M Glad to know it wasn't just me! I'm typically a pretty fast solver (personal best for a Tuesday is 3:05), but this took me just over double that amount of time — this really should have been a Thursday puzzle.
@Andrzej Agreed — I finished this one in 14:18, which is abnormally quick for a Saturday. That said, it was definitely more enjoyable than some of the "pull-your-hair-out" Saturdays we've had.
@Tex This was way harder than a typical gimmicky Thursday — took me almost 21 minutes and had to look up a couple clues (compared to my last five Thursdays, which were all between 7 to 10 minutes, unassisted.)
@Anonymous For what it's worth, I entered them as multiple-letter rebuses, and it was considered valid — I contemplated putting in numerals, but figured that would be a violation of some sort.
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