Mark
Out East
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Out East
I worked in furniture manufacturing for almost 10 years. There is no woodworking machine formally known as a "shaper".
As noted below, Isn't REOIL something you would do when you RESEASON a pan? This clue, as well as the answer "BOP" for "Catchy tune" is beyond my comprehension. Finally, "Set of notes in a seventh chord" is a TETRAD? I've dabbled in acoustic and electric guitar and bass, and this one left me slack-jawed. How is this clue even fair when the Cambridge Dictionary defines tetrad as "a group of four cells produced during cell division."? This puzzle nearly made me give up the NYT Crossword. It took at least a dozen trips to "Wordtips" to keep me moving forward. Clever is one thing, but IMHO, this one was cruel.
@Niall "Looking through the comments I was apparently spared from the ocean wide divide over the meaning of homely. I had no idea what pulchritude meant so I just had to guess it on crosses and moving ME." It literally took me hours to ascertain what was going on with this "clue". Here we have another puzzle putting "razzle-dazzle" over vocabulary and shades of meaning....
Agonizingly difficult - too many times I had to resort to WordTips. BTW, "niter" is a red herring (clue: Component of fertilizer and gunpowder), inasmuch as it contains just some of the letters of the correct answer "nitrate". I suppose you have to accommodate the puzzle constructor's idioms. /rant over
AM/FM are "bands together"? The AM band is from 540–1700 kHz. The FM band is from 87.5 MHz to 108 MHz. They are separated by 85.8 MHz. Hardly "together". As a retired engineer, I find such wordplay bizarre and mostly inscrutable. It would be nice if the puzzle editor paid attention to the scientific basis of a clue. However as a relative "newby" to crossword solving, I suppose the "?" was the absolution. Just my $0.02 (2.00% of one American dollar).
"Nerts" was hopelessly obscure. Had to go digging in the omniscient "clues" feature always online. Do you "solve" anything with repeated consultations to the above?
@Cara I could not agree more!
@Tom Drechsler Perhaps you're referring to a "table router" or a CNC milling machine set up to accept wooden stock. Enough of this. Too many puzzles are dumbed down to be "cute" or impossible to solve with proper knowledge at hand.
@Barry Ancona Like Elbridge Gerry, I too found that there was but one Spartan in the Trojan Horse. I fear this was a hopelessly obscure clue; solved only with a deep dive into ancient Greek history (or a PhD in History). I would have had no shot at solving this puzzle without the greyed-in squares.
"Pool noodle"? What's that? Why not the proper Nerf noodle? I would not have guessed "pool noodle" in a zillion years...
@Captain Quahog Of course, you cannot possess pure "nitrate"; except in perhaps, a customized ionic liquid. Remember balancing valances in HS chemistry (+1 :-1; etc.)? Potassium nitrate is rarely used in fertilizer. From Google/AI: Urea is the most common nitrogen-bearing compound used in fertilizer, favored for its high nitrogen content (46% N). Other widely used nitrogen sources include ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, and ammonium phosphate, Again, "niter" is completely obscure with regadrds to fertilizer. In my opinion, this is a poorly-worded clue.
@Clutch Cargo Years ago, I studied jazz guitar at the former "Modern Music Studios" in Bryn Mawr, PA. Trust me - a "tetrad" has about as much to do with dominant or diminished 7th chord inversions as the man on the moon. Nary a mention of tetrad and any 4-note chord in my studies which occurred during my time there.
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