William
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Chicago IL
Well, I finished the puzzle (slightly under my average time) but, despite believeing myself to be verbally dextrous, I am one of those people who has never really developed any skill with Pig Latin or similar language games like Ubbi-Dubbi. My brain just won't do that. So I completed the puzzle without really "getting" the jokes (even after they were explained in Lovinger's commentary.) But I guess I feel that at my age I don't feel that Pig Latin is a language worth putting my time into!
This one was more of a slog than a pleasure. Too many answers that were a matter of trying different letters (PIAMATERS, MIDINETTES, TARAROAD and, of course, the apparently universally disliked IMMIX) rather than the pleasure of realizing the correct word is buried in a corner of one's brain. Although I live in Chicago, I rarely have occasion to hear references to the Arie Crown Theater, which is located in the cavernous convention center and seems mostly to be the home of corporate events and graduation ceremonies.
Too easy for a Sunday puzzle, except for the "read the mind of the puzzle-crafter" central key which really had nothing to do with what a crossword puzzle is about. For those who figured out the key, it was probably a pleasure. But a real disappointment to me. 3/10
@Your Fired Even after many years (decades) of devotion to the NYT crossword, I am sometimes confused and even irritated by these "gimmick" puzzles. But usually I find that the best approach is to ignore the puzzling clues (such as "-" in this one) and just focus on completing the answers that make sense to me around them. Eventually one or two of the trickier answers start to take on some form that helps my brain to realize that it needs to work a little harder to suss out what's going on. For instance, in this puzzle, I was immediately annoyed by the "-" clues I kept seeing. But I forged on with the others. In the lower section of the puzzle, I suspected that the Victoria Cross was a likely answer for the clue about a British Military award, but obviously that didn't fit. But when I saw that the letters V-C-T were popping up from the "down" answers it helped make me feel more confident that something about the Victoria Cross was probably the correct answer. That jogged my brain to look around more creatively to parse out the answer. Eventually the, having figured out ONE of the "gimmicky" answers, I was then more easily able to work on the other ones I'd skipped over. Once you find the right groove, having that AHA (or today, OHO) moment is, at least for me, a big part of the fun.
@Red Carpet - It is also my birthday today and so I enjoyed today's GHD references. Please wish your son a happy birthday from a "co-celebrant" who, nevertheless, hopes that both he and the Groundhog are wrong about 6 more weeks of winter! (My husband's family lives in Chicago, so we recently relocated here from California and I'm finding the cold a little ... oppressive. Having a February birthday does help a little, though. LOL)
Eh. Finished the puzzle in my normal time but without seeing/getting the anagram thing. Even ignoring the company names, the themed clues were pretty easy to solve. Medical supply company would sell .... Bakery would sell ..... Auto parts company would sell ..... etc. Fine for my completion time average, but not particularly interesting or clever for a Sunday puzzle.
Starting the day with the feeling that I've had a small stroke. I think it would have been less painful if the backwards clues required backwards answers as I first thought they might. Not my favorite puzzle experience (though I finished it in below-average time.)
Not long after starting the puzzle, my frustration with the long ACROSS answers made me decide (for the first time) to work the DOWN clues first. This was the correct approach for me and I enjoyed working through the puzzle after that, (notwithstanding the the ROSAMUND/REEM crossing that added 10 full minutes to my solving -- well, guessing -- time. :-(
I spent a fun semester of law school at the Univeristy of Western Ontario. it it gave me a little jolt of alumnal pride to the see that the puzzle constructors are from the school.
@Katie - I disagree. To the extent that some people want to declare how much they love a certain puzzle, it makes equal sense to provide a forum where people want to express that they didn't like it. Otherwise what's the point? Personally if I dislike a puzzle I like to explain why -- but if people can't just say "YUCK" then you also have to ban those people who just say "GREAT."
Meh. I mostly found the puzzle a little bit too easy. What slowed me down (well, other than the word RATITE) was the title "Swing States." I had caught on to the rebus stuff but kept being thrown by the fact that a number of two state abbreviations in the rebuses (like HI, MT, UT or NV) did not, in any way, shape or form, refer to states that were considerd "swing states" in any election in the last 40-50 years. Overthinking the puzzle can be just as frustrating as underthinking it, I guess.
I miss the smooth feel of writing ink onto newsprint while doing the puzzle. On the other hand (or, I suppose, NOT on the other hand) I don't miss getting printer's ink on my hand. I've reached the sad age where I'm missing a lot of things from the past.
This Thursday was more of a pleasure than usual. I sighed when I thought it was yet another rebus (not my favorite, and always sort of a pain to enter when playing on my laptop) but brightened up considerably when I realized it was something different!
A fun solve. Not being a sports fan it took me a bit to get clued in to the fact that: (1) a sport was involved and (2) what that sport was. But once I grasped the theme, figuring out the circled country abbreviations wasn't too difficult (even a complete not sports guy has SOME idea of which countries are the soccer powerhouses.)
@CCed Thank you. I wasn't aware that one could turn off the timer. It is certainly a temptation but for the fact that I usually try to solve the puzzle over my morning tea and the timer is the only way to (sometimes) make me aware that I am spending far too much of my day procrastinating with the puzzle!
So I DO speak Spanish yet I continued for a bit to be puzzled by the answer to "Once e.g. (NUMERO) even when it completed the puzzle for me. And when I DID figure it out I was sort of irked by it. I guess having a foreign language answer to a foreign language clue feels like a step too far. Or maybe the clue should have read "Once, por ejemplo."
Feh! Maybe I'm having a bad day, but I didn't like many of the clues, didn't find several of the answers to be sensible, found the "theme" to be insufficiently woven into structure and wasn't at all taken with the minimal (albeit somewhat clever) rebus. My least favorite puzzle in a very long while.
@Paul - WHERE DOES "NOCAP" COME FROM? Not here to complain, just to learn. I'm happy to pick up current slang (even though I know that if I try to use it I will probably just get eyerolls. LOL) Can anyone educate me? What is the basis or root of "NOCAP"? How did it come to mean "dead serious"?
@Jack McCullough Almost every country in the world, except perhaps for the vert smallest, has some sort of regional governmental organization covering an area of towns, cities and countryside.
@Mean Old Lady - The Meerkat is also a character in Disney's "The Lion King" (not that I could easily remember the name...)
@Puzzled Brit Congratulations! That's really the secret goal most of us have worked for at one point or another. It's a great feeling, isn't it?
@KFC The difficulty is part of the fun, although admittedly it doesn't always feel like that! As others here are saying, if you keep on with solving you will experience (probably slowly) the sense of accomplishment of getting past just Monday and Tuesday and reaching a point where you can regularly get through all or most of the week. I still remember the first time I solved a Sunday puzzle all on my own. I've been working the NYT crossword (on and off) for over 50 years now (God, I'm old!) and enjoy both the fact that Mon and Tue are usually a little too simple and that Wed through Sunday still regularly need a little effort. It's a nice as a regular challenge and a reminder that my brain can still work.
@RQ - on my computer, if i touch the ESC key when my cursor is in a square, I am then able to type multiple letters in the square. Alternatively, in the line of text above the puzzle and clues, the word REBUS appears. If your cursor is in the appropriate square, click on REBUS and you can then enter multiple letters.
@Tony So I DO speak Spanish yet I continued for a bit to be puzzled by the answer to "Once e.g. (NUMERO) even when it completed the puzzle for me. And when I DID figure it out I was sort of irked by it. I guess having a foreign language answer to a foreign language clue feels like a step too far.
@Mr Ochie Same problem with my Rebus key. Maybe it's the system but it was particularly irritating in this puzzle where I was sort of trying to guess where some of the rebuses were placed.
@Linda Jo Some years ago I realized that when I find the ACROSS clues daunting (like when they require extra long answers or, as here, when they just don't make sense) I will stop and switch to doing the DOWN one first in order to avoid too much early frustration. However I don't think I could allow myself to do ACROSS and DOWN answers at the same time. (At least not until I have made at least two passes attempting all the ACROSS followed by all the DOWN.) If feels .... unsanitary???? I guess that isn't how my mother taught me to do the puzzle so, as with so many things I learned from my mother, 50 years later guess I am just stuck with it. I admire your ability to solve the puzzle so freely!!
Eh.... I hate to say it but I found today's puzzle a tab too easy for a Wednesday. One of my fastest Wednesday solves. I'm an enormous fan of Stephen Sondheim (and was lucky enough in my life to the original Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd, Passion, Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George. And, yes, I guess that's a boast. Though it also means I'm a little old.) On the other hand, to my eternal shame, at some point in my adult life I came to realize that the "depressing/not really very good" Broadway show that my Mom and Dad had walked out of at intermission when I was a child was actually the original "Follies"! I don't want to say that I love them less for this act of criminally bad taste, but well I guess everyone discovers that their parents were flawed and damaged in some way. LOL. Anyway - so I was excited when I saw this was a Sondheim-themed puzzle but a little disppointed by the relative sparsity of Sondheim-based answers. (Although to be fair, a Sondheim-theme really calls out for a Sunday puzzle.) I didn't even see the "LOOK I MADE A HAT" reference until I'd finished the entire board. Given that fact, I don't think I can really attribute my speed today to my familiarity with Sondheim as much what I think is otherwise a sort of simple solve.
@Emma Sure. I don't think I was expressing any thought other than it felt a little too easy for me. No shade to people who found it more difficult. I think it's fair to assume that EVERY puzzle is hard for some people and easy for others. Every one has their good puzzles and their tough puzzles. We all know different things.
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