spurious
Sydney
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Sydney
A relief today after Friday to discover one had not simply forgotten how to do crosswords.
The northwest corner caused much heartache in a puzzle that was otherwise coming along at a pleasant pace. I had AWOL immediately but have never heard of ORLON, so kept going back and forth on its legitimacy. I guessed that 7A was LYDIA – I have no idea why that name sprang to mind – but had a gut feeling 17A was NEXTFALL, which was such a cute answer I wanted to stick with it. And I was misdirected by 14A, thinking it was somehow PETSTORY. One of those ones you think you’re gonna nail, but don’t quite.
One of those Saturdays that reminds you you’re not quite there yet — having near tripled the xwstats median solve time.
The trick was straightforward. However, there was the constructor’s wavelength, and my wavelength, and on the accompanying Venn diagram the circles do not meet.
@Dave For this puzzle I think 11A/12D would have been very difficult without it.
That was a well-done puzzle, for mine. Lots of things I didn’t know I could guess – although I’ve seen others say that on puzzles that frustrated the hell out of me. The stick in my case was 27D, 29D and 31A – which I reckon I would have got without checking had I gone with my gut that 48A was HASTA. (I know no Spanish.) Instead stuck to the conviction that 30D ended with an S, so was never going to see LATTE ART. Otherwise a perfect challenge level, taking between 20 and 30 minutes, which is where I like my Saturdays to be.
This will mean little to anyone but me, but the first time I’ve (knowingly) beaten the xwstats average.
Enjoyable Friday. Speaking of enjoyable things, should I be able to see the new midi in the iPhone app? (Asked last week but couldn’t access the thread after.)
@Molly As a fellow non-US citizen, or denizen, I hear you.
Not seeing the purported midi in the iPhone app. Can anyone help?
@Whoa Nellie From the point of view of pure UX, the optimum is a mix of high difficulty and low difficulty puzzles. (Dopamine (q.v.).) Thus someone like me, averaging 40 mins for a Saturday, is excited to knock one over in 13. If there’s a clever plan in place it’s probably that, though I suspect it’s just natural variation around a difficulty mean that’s slowly decreasing over time. (Saturdays from 2016 are genuinely much harder — there are months where I average well over an hour after eventually conceding things will have to be looked up.)
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