Steve
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Melbourne
Have none of you ever heard of moot court? Sheesh. And to those folks resisting pronoun pairings, this is a great opportunity to educate yourselves! Anyhoo, gotta love a juicy Tuesday that sparks some conflict.
This is a weird kind of elitism - or something - on display. We absolutely do not need different latin endings to the same word to specify various combinations of gender cohorts. One word works fine, and dictionaries agree. Nobody calls women, "gals," anymore, either. We're all just guys, you guys. If you wish to be so specific, go for it, I guess, but there is no obligation to do so. Therefore, the clue is fair.
Didn't crack into this puzzle until 34A (ANOS). From there, correctly guessed PAISLEY and OOLONG TEA, and seemed to be off-and-running, having a reasonably quick time with the rest of the SW and SE. But, then, it got tough for me, as I nibbled away at the NW and NW, laboriously working my way toward the middle. Great puzzle. Thanks
@Sarah f As a general rule, I don't do lookups, and I too feel the weight of failure on the rare occasions that I do;) My personal hack for completing tougher crosswords is that frequently the answer is far less complicated than the clue, you just have to understand the clue. Or sometimes you have to walk away for five minutes, let your brain marinate, and look at the puzzle anew. I find the experience of working out the grid that way much more satisfying than going on an internet scavenger hunt for answers to popular entertainers I no longer have the band-width to keep track of. I don't view the crossword as a competition. I view it as an exercise, from which I happen to generally derive pleasure, so I don't really think there's a wrong way to do a crossword puzzle, and I don't think doing lookups is cheating.
Goose eggs on the first pass. ATARI was my first fill that I had a high degree of confidence in. I knew I'd remember the Sex and the City character that was escaping my grasp if I got a couple of crosses, and I did, filled in the SE, then worked back upwards diagonally. NE remained elusive to the very end. Even as I keyed in the last letter, I remained skeptical that I'd get the music. Finished two minutes over my Saturday average. Stunningly satisfying puzzle, thank you.
This puzzle felt tough as I was going through it, moving around a lot, nibbling away at it. And like others, I found the southeast tricky. But then I finished at 75 percent of my Thursday average. Weird. Or, as someone else might describe it, about 600 percent less than my average time.
@Maria C. member of the Teamster union = truck driver
@Steve L I breezed through yesterday, whereas I found today's a worthy adversary. Funny how that works.
@Anita Same. I do puzzles in chunks until I get stuck, then I start a new chunk. With Thursdays, especially, I try to figure out the theme before I get to the revealer. I don't even care if it's an inefficient way to do it. It's how like it. This one got me today. I didn't work it out until I saw ALIENATE. I'd probably completed about two-thirds of the grid.
Didn't get a TOEhold until RAWBAR/RIAN, but was most relieved when I solved TEMPORARY TATTOO because the only thing I could come up with to that point for 14A was REVEAL ALL in an otherwise mostly empty NW, but that would mean 7D would have to be a different Rita, which would raze the very foundation of everything I thought I knew about NYTimes crosswords. SO ANYWAYS
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