J.S.
Vancouver
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Vancouver
I actually loved the ZZ theme/clues, but loathed the upper left section, where I got stuck. SOUNDERS, NAZCA and PARDO crossing each other made it basically impossible without tedious flyspecking for me, since I've never heard of any of those, so that's what I did. Kind of a shame too, because I liked the puzzle a lot otherwise, and the rest of the proper names/trivia were manageable with the crosses.
So many proper names crossing one another (ARSENE/EVAN, JJWATT, SERGIO and OLSEN/SELENA, DAVIES/EUNICE, ARTHURASHE) and many that I wasn't familiar with that this one involved a lot of tedious flyspecking for me. Otherwise I thought the theme was fun.
A fittingly tough puzzle for my birthday. :) Neither PISCES nor a JUNEBUG am I.
Om nom nom nom nom nom nom. <- *me eating a CREPE*
How am I supposed to enjoy this puzzle now, knowing that "Aaron PURR (punny name for a cat)" could have shown up as a clue? (I kid . . . mostly.)
Pretty easy breezy for a Saturday, but fun and enjoyable, and I appreciated the absence of proper names/trivia for the most part. (Always a pleasure to see ABBA.)
Wow, I loved this one—it did come together for me easily, but I think in part that's a marker of good construction; there's not a single Natick. I didn't know the proper names ELLA and NED, but they were well-situated within the puzzle and so were easy to get from the crosses. Cheers to Mr. Berriman and thanks for a great puzzle.
Wow! I don't know why I loved this one so much, but it just hit the spot for me. Hard enough to feel meaty (I had to work on the top two quadrants for a few minutes to get them to fall into place), but smooth enough to feel fair and delightful. As a lover of Spelling Bee, I'm always gratified to see NENE show up in context. PWNED and ZEROTOHERO were favorites of mine (and the latter has now put me in the mood to watch Disney's Hercules).
@SP What a great question! I love puzzles of all kinds, I think probably for the same reasons many people do: I like the lightbulb/aha moment in some cases, in others I just like steadily getting better at certain types of puzzles and feeling myself getting smarter. My complaints about the NYT puzzles (which I usually try to keep minimal, and overall I try to say more positive than negative things in my comments, personally) are usually about naticks or what seem like just trivia-based crosses that can't be puzzled out logically, where if you just don't know a certain proper name, you're s.o.l. I need it to at least be figure-out-able from the crosses. Though I don't usually post about it myself, I also kind of agree with people who say that the puzzles are getting too easy, mainly because it just feels less enjoyable when there are fewer "aha" moments or bits of clever misdirecting wording, and I love those; they're one of the funnest aspects of puzzles to me, so when they're missing/a puzzle feels like a gimme, it's not that I hate it, but it doesn't have that magical "Oh my brain is actually capable of figuring this out" moment to it. That little epiphanic moment where everything comes together. Today's was a good example of a puzzle with some really good AHA moments that didn't even require misdirecting wording. Loved PIPEDOWN and TIDEOVER in particular!
My fav this week by a long shot. JENGATOWER and SECURELINE were clued so well I can forgive the clunky (sorry) HECKA. We had a heat wave here in Vancouver earlier in the summer, and my jar of VITAMIN gummies got all melty and then THICKENed and congealed, so now it's just one giant gummy. I've just been pulling chunks off it.
Some of you ain't no HOLLA back girls.
Was going a bit slowly until I got to the Harry Potter clue, and fortunately I remember enough HP lore that those long crosses immediately came together after that. Ended up just slightly under my average Tues time. Perfect (and definitely breezy) for a Tuesday, imo.
@ScottM Me too. And despite the other snippy, bad-faith reply, I finished it just fine; I just didn't like the construction. I thought the tricks were fun, actually, but RATSO, BLUTO, SIVA crossing VIEIRA and LIDAR? Some satisfying moments (I liked DRINKSALLAROUND a lot), but the puzzle as a whole needed more time in the oven.
Sometimes the comments and quibbles are more interesting that the actual puzzle. I thought this was a puzzle that had great fill for the most part and was challenging but chewy and fun, but there were a couple of spots (for me, DIRK crossing DADA and ZADIE was the worst offender) with really questionable fill. A bit crossword has a lot of pieces, and I don't think it's uncommon for there to be some parts that are stronger than others, but some extra editing for the SE and SW quadrants would have really elevated this puzzle, because there are some genuinely brilliant clues in the rest of it.
My fastest Saturday ever at 6:56. :) Agree that it was quite a bit on the easier side, at least for me, but not a bad puzzle. (I've been playing some of the older Saturday puzzles from 2006-7 or so from the archives, so I did get a bit of whiplash working on an older Saturday that took me over an hour and then doing this one in under ten minutes. Maybe I'm just not as attuned to the zeitgeist from back then anymore.)
I also thought this was pretty easy for a Saturday, but I'll be honest: I'll personally take a well-constructed easy puzzle over one that's artificially (imo) challenging because it includes a bunch of naticks and proper name trivia any day. (Of course a good challenging puzzle with tricky cluing that minimizes naticks is the best, but I've found that pretty rare in my years of playing.)
I always love when a TERN is mentioned, because it reminds me of my all-time favourite Whose Line Is It Anyway bit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBzwv057GPs" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBzwv057GPs</a>
@Jake Yep. Took me forever to figure it out because I was more willing to accept "SDS" as a weird abbrev. for "students" than to question OPENENDEd. A really frustrating and dissatisfied end to what was otherwise a great puzzle.
Loved this one, and found it a lot more gratifying than last Saturday's. I have to say that I really don't mind the riddle-like clues as much as some other people seem to. I find them really satisfying, and I think it's a lot more fair to have riddle-type clues than Naticks or a glut of proper names. Thanks Byron!
Does Sean also write the captions for the images that go with the Wordplay column? Today's is pretty good.
@Sebastian Unless I'm missing a joke here, it's TALC that was the additive in gum. TAR is the "roofing supply." I'm not crazy about talc in my food either though.
@Ken W. I thought this was a fun puzzle, but TENREC and ANNE were my last cross too. (I had Aye-Aye there originally, which is not at all hedgehog-like, but their faces look a lot like mine did when I finally got that cross.)
@J.S. ("Eastern lines" was my favourite this time.)
Another super-fast Friday, and a personal best for me at 7:30—felt more like a Tuesday, but a fun one. I loved GOODKARMA.
*Said in the voice of the guy with the "Sickos" shirt from that Onion cartoon*: Yes . . . haha . . . YES!!!
@Charles Nelson Reilly I had hex for quite a while, too. The French ATOI is "A toi," two words in one here.
I quite liked the shoutout to Will Shortz in today's Zorse (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite NYT puzzles).
@Eric Hougland Agreed—I was being a bit flippant, but there are some puzzles from back then that seem nigh-impenetrable and require a lot of working over. The strategies I've found myself using for those ones (finding plurals, tiny footholds here and there) are different, but I think (hope) these delves into the archives are making me a better solver ultimately.
@George That was the last letter that I got and had to flyspeck to get it. Was thinking nERTS.
@Steve L I love Wallace Stevens and I love the poem, but I confess that I'm at a real loss for how these puzzles are supposed to relate to it. Maybe I'm being too literal, but the sixth stanza (the sixth "way" of looking at the blackbird) is the following section, which doesn't seem to have much bearing on today's grid. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. Maybe I'm missing something.
@Thomas Me too. Spent an extra five mins flyspecking before trying it. Really frustrating.
@Steve L I did too! A Spelling Bee cognitohazard.
@Steve L Of course. But sometimes it just also is a bad puzzle.
@SBK in TO I'm not sure what you're responding to, since nothing I wrote above suggests that constructors do not have to balance difficulty with doableness (in fact the opposite), but no, I do not accept that that means that every single created crossword (the "least of puzzles") need be applauded. But thanks for the rude and condescending "explanation".
@Charles Peterson Oh, nonsense. Certainly whether you liked a particular puzzle is subjective, but there are nonetheless best practices to cruciverbalism the same way there are in any puzzle form. A good crossword puzzle should strive to strike a balance between challenging while remaining accurate and fair: avoiding Naticks where possible, having any particularly obscure proper names be gettable through crosses, and making sure that any scientific terms are used accurately are all important elements of building a puzzle. "And so it always comes across as disagreeably egotistical to state one's opinion as if it were fact." An internet forum may not be the place for you, if you find personal opinions so disagreeable.
@Justin I didn't realize it was only available in Canada! Yes, you got it—it's been delightful fun despite only being in beta. SPOILER: The clue in question was "If Mr. Shortz is around, we'll hear some clever puns and witticisms" and the answer was "Where there's a Will, there's a way with words."
@M&M I don't know, but I'm heartbroken—I've been loving Zorse. A sad start to the new year for NYT Games if it is, in fact, being completely discontinued.
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