Withers Wither With Her
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New England
I'm not sure of the directionality of this, but as I've become a regular player of the NYT Crossword, and more recently an everyday-finisher of the NYT Crossword, it's become clear that there is a correlation between being successful at these puzzles and being able to control your emotions and not panic in a sticky situation. What pushed me from giving up and/or using hints 3-4 days a week? Literally, it was emotional emotional intelligence. Being able to bear the knowledge that something is wrong, and calmly work through understanding what the problem is on your way to finding possible solutions. Being able to walk away and come back later with a fresh eye on the dilemma. Possessing the confidence in yourself to know that you are capable of more than seems possible given the mess you see in front of you. Anyway, I definitely would have given up on this puzzle a few months ago. So glad it was published today, because I had so much fun picking my way through to the finish line. Took me a bit to find my error - AWVS instead of ATVS. I never remember if lachrymose means tired or sad. WEARIEST turned into TEARIEST, and I got my happy little finish music. Thanks for a great puzzle today!
@G L History is current events that are not current. I don't think anyone would suggest that we ban history trivia from crossword puzzles. (Though if the NYT is taking suggestions on which outdated trivia to remove, can I vote for cars and sports?)
@Mike Many of us solved it just fine, and had fun along the way. Notice that some of the spaces are circled. That's your clue to figuring out what needs to be switched. All of the switched-up words are still words, and it really only takes being confident in a few of the down words to make good educated guesses about what switches with what. It's made even easier when you see that the switches are always between the two words that share a row. There are so many paths to success with this one. Not that it's necessarily easy, but it just takes a little persistence and is nowhere near impossible or nonsense.
@Vaer Before today I thought the plural of okra was... okra. I definitely pluralized some neural connections figuring out plurals in today's puzzle!
@JonathanT I love that feeling! When all you need is one flash of insight, and all of a sudden a whole corner of the puzzle falls into place. Especially satisfying when it was completely or mostly blank until you figured out the one answer you needed to help your brain unlock the rest.
It's more fun to play when I can actually see which spaces are highlighted to go with the clue I'm reading, and when pencil mode is readable. Can't tell you what I think of today's puzzle because it's basically unplayable. Feels like salt in the wound after yesterday's fiasco. Come ON.
@Nirad I think it's more likely that there is going to be fluctuation all the time, and we notice it more when things fluctuate in the same direction more than one or two days in a row. A few weeks ago I was worried that my streak was due not to my own improving ability but because the puzzles seemed to be easier than usual. I did have a moment this morning when I was pretty sure my streak was about to end. Though to be fair, that is a pretty common feeling for me on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
@Brendan The typical successful basket is worth 2 points in a game of basketball.
@Andrew Even the folks who are trying to argue that ORANG is common and not an abbreviation wouldn't be able to explain the "zoo" part. How are orangutans specifically zoo animals? Just sloppy and lazy cluing for that one. But I will admit that I might only be feeling emotions about this one because I'm too FEMININE.
@Man and 2 dogs I was proud of myself for picking up on the theme/trick fairly early on, but probably spent about 15 minutes stuck at the end thanks to TOGAE vs. TOGAs. I was not quick enough on my mental feel to see that the small sweat was obviously BEADS, and after setting aside that problem area I thoroughly went over the rest of my answers to sniff out any typos or errors (there were none) until returning back to those. I tried to make PSATS work there (don't sweat them as much as you would the SAT?), wondering if EXURP might be, IDK, some sort of regional slang for EXURB? Then I finally saw BEADS, and realized that of course TOGAE must be an option for that plural.
I spent way too long thinking that the Roman numerals were phonetic puns/placeholders. It makes way more sense that their substitution in the answers has a more literal solution. Even though the pun thing worked in a few spots (or at least it did when I had some blanks and wrong guesses in a couple of squares), I can only imagine the fury if they were filling such a subjective pronunciation-based role, given the diversity of accents and dialects in the English language. When I started this puzzle last night, 1a's "TIMID" sure did describe me. (Though ironically I didn't figure out the correct answer for that spot until near the end.) Once I got my head around the theme, it was such a fun puzzle to finish. Especially compared to my sad start. The last wrong answer I corrected for today's win was "CHIN". I was so sure it was "SHIN" until I had more of that corner filled in and could see that it couldn't be. I didn't realize until I read the article that I never did figure out "F before E", but obviously got it thanks to the crossing words. I know I've even heard that riddle before, but just couldn't get my brain to release the answer!
@Mean Old Lady I was so confused at first, until I realized you were commenting on today's Spelling Bee, not the Crossword. Well, totally with you and your Granny on that frustration! As a small consolation, when I opened up the game to see if they'd fixed it (they haven't), I did immediately see a pangram to enter. I am not a dedicated Spelling Bee player, so that was the first time I've gotten an pangram as my first word.
@Roger That "VIII" in the lower left was the turning point for me, too! I wasn't even sure of that V, but had been so tripped up by the seemingly wrong letter combos that I was really questioning everything until I realized that that was an 8 sitting there waiting to be used in some clever way.
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