Doggydoc

Please excuse my use of this forum to mourn the passing of Vertex on the 29th. Apparently it’s an irrevocable decision unless … As others have pointed out, vertex uses a different part of the brain from word puzzles. I enjoyed it very much. Burgess Voshelle is an artist. He has constructed works worthy of display in any museum in the world, using triangles, colors, and computer technology. I wish him the best in his endeavors and hope he can find another platform. I’ve complained before about the difficulty in finding it on the puzzle page, and if part of the decision was popularity, that may well have been the reason. The editors have offered Tiles as a substitute, but I ran out my string and interest there long ago. Bon voyage, Vertex. 😔

_ stand = KEG, crossed with KIVA small loans??? You’ve got to be kidding. I sincerely hope the constructor was “helped” by the editors for that one.

Please add one more did NOT like. First, it seems to me the editors need to establish some kind of rules regarding rebi. A different rebus across from the down rebus in the same square would be my first taboo. (Incidentally, rebi should be forbidden in Sunday puzzles, IMHO.) Second, they should look askance at all offerings in a foreign language, especially super-specific parsing like 31 across, in Hebrew, one characteristic of letters in that language.

This one came up very high on my I don’t care meter.

Re: Terms and Conditions. In English law, use of superfluous synonyms are common: i.e. aid and abet, assault and battery, cease and desist. I understand this was a byproduct of the Norman invasion and was intended to clear up differences between French vs. Saxon terms. Another more commonly cited difference might be beef, veal or mutton on the (Norman) table vs. cow, calf or sheep in the (Saxon) field.

Spoiler: it’s not about the crossword puzzle. Besides my fondness for the crossword, Wordle and Connections, (ok, I have some time on my hands,) I’ve become a devotee of Vertex. The only way I can get to that particular venue is by coming here to the crossword blog, (which I also enjoy, BTW,) then going to the upper left lines, press there, then press other, then games. This gets me to the COMPLETE puzzle page, including Vertex. Please give it a shot. Burgess Voshell, who is the sole author there is brilliant. Some of his creations could be in a show at MoMA. Then join me in asking the emus to make it more accessible.

Personally, (I don’t know what others have already written,) I must assure Ms. Park that I had no problem with IS PEPSI OK, or the clueing.

Like the man said, if you have to explain it, the joke isn’t funny. Tried and failed using rebi. So I took out all the extra letters, even though the new words didn’t quite fit. These Thursday gimmicks are getting more and more onerous. Congrats anyway to the new cruciverbalist, hope you can please even me next time.

Complete blank on the northwest corner, beginning with NEPAL vs. TIBET, closely followed by LIMO vs. TUXES vs. TENTS, then misspelling SEGEL. Needed even more help than usual. And what the heck is HOLLA?

The sound you may have heard could have been clumps of my hair hitting the floor while I was tearing it out trying to find my error. It was compounded by appealing to the emus for not being able to do so. Finally it was gasps of relief and then my face flushing audibly when I discovered a new way to screw up a perfect solution. Just type in a bracket (]) in place of an I, as in ]DLY, then try to find it in the grid. Don’t ask me how I managed to do that. I even retyped all the O’s to make sure I hadn’t hit 0 by mistake. Again, my apologies to the emus. And a warning to the rest of you: give up that string early to avoid OCD problems.

Sam: your illustration of excess verbiage in the music review was apt. Not kinda apt, either.

Great story, Deb! 😆

Ok. Have no idea if anyone is still able to solve these things without resorting to Google, at least. If you do, I respect all that you do. I’ve never heard of chachaslide and my research seems to say it replaced the hokey-pokey and the funky chicken somewhere along the line. As for Spanish, I never took the language in school, so differences in idiomatic expressions are way beyond me. Strategy and tactics are definitely not synonymous but reflect the level of planning of military and other operations. None of this should be read as a criticism of the constructor, but my guess is that the editorial team is really coming to the unfortunate natural conclusion of their usefulness by daring each other to offer more and more obscure and opaque clues.

Peppa pig. And four-year-old yet? Thank God for Wikipedia, which told me it’s an English animated series about a piglet directed at pre-schoolers. What’s 4-year-old got to do with it? I don’t see a piglet as four-years old. Is the audience the four-year old pig? ____ food as a clue? Only with Peppa crossing it, and even then … If the intent is to make clues completely indecipherable, why not post a grid with no clues at all? And how far do you go to have answers directed at people from England who may have watched an animated series there in their childhood?