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Normandie
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Normandie
What a fun puzzle - I smiled all through the solve. Sometimes I think we overly focus on difficulty and forget about joy.
@Caitie For those of you who never took a surveying class: • One Chain: 4 rods = 1 Chain (66 feet). • one Furlong: 40 rods = 1 Furlong (660 feet). • one Acre: 160 square rods (e.g., a plot of land 4 rods wide by 40 rods long). Equals 1 chain by 1 furlong. One mile = 8 furlongs You can keep going and derive a lot of the British land measures from this - including quarter-sections and sections (1 square mile). So, it only took 52 years for the knowledge gleaned from that surveying course to provide me with this big payoff!
Having both a cold and a Christmas holiday threw me off, so I happily attacked this puzzle thinking today was a Monday. Partway through I thought, wow, this is a pretty tough Monday. There'll be a few comments on this one!!! Oops.
While a PIT *is* a sunken bay in a car repair shop, Sam, you would never change a tire in or from one. You re-tire a race car in the PIT at a racetrack. Who knows, it's etymology might spring from the pit in a garage, though.
@Art With a nod to Inigo Montoya, I don't think that shape looks like what you think it does
@Jerry His brother Gap, a pianist, played at the Woocliff hotel lounge, near Rochester NY, for decades. He too was a great guy and Chuck would occasionally appear as a treat. One lonely night on a business trip as I sat at the bar chatting with Gap he asked for my card. A week later a box was delivered containing every one of his albums. Great family!
@Andrzej What makes this worse is that there is (was?) a menswear chain in the US named The Men's Wearhouse which injected a tiny bit of doubt into the answer Everytime you spelled it.
Difficult and the quality seemed uneven (as mentioned earlier, "derats"? Yes, in hindsight it is workable- with crossovers, not epiphanies). Also agree that it simply wasn't witty or much fun.
I'm a tad surprised, or maybe annoyed, that the comments on many recent puzzles have seemed like whines about their difficulty, or the obscurity of some of the references. And then when one like this is published - so simple and uninspiring that I end up focusing on time-to-solve, rather than enjoying the experience, people love it. I'll take hard, or creative, any day.
Difficult, fabulous, and fair. Really enjoyed it once I realized it wasn't going to slam me if I was just patient.
@Dan trivia: Edy's was founded in 1928 in Oakland CA by - wouldn't you know it - two guys named Edy and Dreyer. When they expanded eastward they separated the brands and gave Edy to the eastern states, so people wouldn't confuse Dreyer's with Breyer's, which I always do.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Off the top of my head, I think that Asti IS an Italian city, Spumanti is a sparkling wine, and Asti Spumanti is the sparkling wine from Asti. Prosecco is a secco that has left the minor leagues.
@Dan New Oxford American Dictionary: nonet nö'net | noun -a group of nine people or things, especially musicians. -a musical composition for nine voices or instruments.
When the first clue of a puzzle is a Marvel character, followed closely by *anything* from Game of Thrones, my mood sours. Fortunately the bulk of the remainder was enjoyable, the theme easily sussed, and the clueing good. 16 years old. Ugh.
@Tom Stalnaker A toilet paper's thickness is often denoted by how many plys it has.
@Francis I had exactly that experience as well, but knowing all the way that I was struggling with a well-constructed puzzle. Was proud to squeak in under my average with no look ups.
Wow. One of the easiest puzzles ever. No lookups, no waiting for inspiration, not that many crosses needed. Oh well. Tomorrow's ... Friday. Maybe.
What a great puzzle! 15 minutes over my average, but it didn't require look-ups, just slogging away. I watched the original series, none of the follow-ons, but I still had to think hard to come up with the names. ARUHA really threw me because it was so obviously a typo. But between that and CHEKOV I realized that some names were reversed - it wasn't until after I solved the puzzle read the comments that BEAM ME UP clicked as the key to the reversed names and that they *all* were reversed. Clever little references just kept popping up. Bravo!! Let's have more like this!!!
@Nora One thing I really enjoy about living in France is that so many streets are named after historical figures, famous and obscure. Scientists, writers, artists, military heroes, famous dates in history. The States seem to love naming things after hack politicians. Cheesy...
@Andrzej community court: at the local RECreation CENTER you can find basketball and volleyball courts open to the public. Pretty good misdirect.
@Bobby Salmon "usually a collection of university teams based on geographic regions." Ah, those were the days!
For yinz Pittsburghers: Forget the H, do you remember when there was an O in Pittsburgh? Right on Forbes, best Cheesesteaks and fries ever. But nO O nO mO.
@B. Growing up in the US with a civil engineer dad, I learned early what a transmission pylon was.
@Gareth I sympathize with Gareth's comments, and I try not to look things up. Sometimes I'll think I know the answer and will look up my answer, not the clue. A tiny balm for my conscience. But in any event, no one is judging me other than myself, and when I forget and go make toast in the middle of a solve, with the puzzle open on the screen, well, they're just times. No matter.
@dutchiris Don't forget George Romero - Night of the Living Dead 😬
Ugh. I have weekend visitors and couldn't get to the puzzle in time. No problem, except I live in Europe and usually solve it and get to be a very early reader of the comments. It's now the wee hours of Monday, and with the popularity of the constructor's notes, and the resulting plethora of comments, I had to go through hundreds of comments to get to @Andrzej's comment. And then he punted on the puzzle!!! A cruel universe....
@Rich in Atlanta I imagine he's referring to the Gulf of America. A 16 letter imaginary body of water.
@Gareth Yeah, Maggie killed me in the NW. Eventually I dredged up Ashley, not really knowing who she was - and even then I was wrong!
@Jane Wheelaghan You're right, but you missed it. NEAT implies no ICE in your drink. So the answers all have the letters ICE removed, as stated in the column. Bento is therefore BEN(Ice)TO - "be nice to".
@Andrzej WHAT???? A holiday without a profit motive?? I'm glad we fixed *that*!!!
@Cynic No, but at times like that I usually reboot - whatever the device.
@Jim The good thing about averages is that if you are always higher than your average, your average automatically gets higher and fixes the problem! 😉
@Andrzej Brie on a cracker? Not here in the land of fromage! Maybe in the states, but I still find it hard to believe.
Tough one. Loved some of the clever cluing; was I'll say "irritated" at some of the obscurities, which have already been hashed over by everyone else. Bottom line, though, is we occasionally need a stumper like this. I'd turn into Narcissus if I had a steady diet of Krappy puzzles.
@Francis I was trying to come up with a clever name for these hybrid cars based on "chimera" but "carmera," my best shot, is pretty weak.
@Marshall Walthew Jamie Leigh Curtis. Double Nepo!
@Patrick J. I would say the clueing via the technical meaning of nth is far less common than the uh, common usage of word.
@pnk that's usually the Comprehendive Exam, not the Oral defense.
@Dave S Actually, aren't half of your puzzles slower than your average? 😀 (No, they're slower than your median, but you get my drift)
@Tanith Rohe No, but I did move from AP Spanish to AP English to, finally, AP Italian. I had a great rationale for each entry.
@rumbear I kept trying to fit "padano"
@Justin pretend it's Individual. Works great.
@Teresa it's not that it's illogical, but that other combos are also logical. So, confusion abounds because you simply have to memorize them.
@Francis. I finished the puzzle in great time, very happy. Except it was incorrect 🫢. Spent the rest of the morning learning to spell humIdor. 🤬. Byebye good time.
@Andrew. I never thought much about bells or handbells (even though my sister plays them). But then I saw, and visited, a bell foundry in a nearby town. It was cool. They sell handbells, and even made the new bells foe Notre Dame cathedral in 2013, before the fire. <a href="https://cornille-havard.com/la-fonderie" target="_blank">https://cornille-havard.com/la-fonderie</a>/
@Agnes Grey Nice airport serves Nice and the Cote d'Azur. CDG and Orly serve Paris. And Nice has flights to Paris.