Matthew
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
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Melbourne, VIC, Australia
@B Another Pākehā (non-Māori) New Zealander chiming in. The casualness of the answer felt at odds with the fact it is a deeply meaningful thing. I don't know of anyone who would call tā moko a mere FACE TAT. And yes, other religious and social adornments (and terms) show up in the crossword, but not without people in the comments like myself and Sylvie wondering about the appropriateness of how something was clued. I'm not putting this clue on the same level, but look at the notes for this 2017 crossword when the clue was "God, to Hebrews" (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2017-09-10.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2017-09-10.html</a>), and this isn't the only time it's happened, I just can't find the most recent example of it occuring (within the last few years at least).
I sped through Monday's puzzle with a time of 6:02 and no lookups, so imagine my surprise when the difficulty spiked for me and today's took me 18 minutes to solve! I didn't get the theme until halfway through, and by that time I had messed myself up with LETiT instead of LETAT, Ready instead of RARIN (which I think was clued strangely, shouldn't it have had an apostrophe?), dMS instead of IMS, and sPit instead of OPEN.
I'd never heard of lush or SOT used as synonyms before and had to Google what they meant after completing the puzzle, so not surprising that was my last completed clue! I always approach Thursdays with a bit of dread and expecting a rebus to show up, but this one was quite fun.
@Andrzej it'll get through to them! It just takes a little while, and the automation is a bit frustrating. I've emailed them a few times now because I lost a 54 day streak for that reason and it took them about 2 days to respond, but it did get sorted.
Plus the Wordplay link isn't working on the app! Maybe I'm not the only one with puzzle trouble today.
Was doing really well up until that SE corner, but then I entirely blanked on it aside from AIR (at a guess) until I came to the column!
I must have seen DOULA written down before but I still had to flyspeck and realise something was wrong when I couldn't work out what a HoNT was.
@E. seconded! Awful system, I have to click on the Wordplay author's name to open it in the browser then click today's column to try and get back to it. At least give us the option of opening it in the browser from that new window.
@Bruce thank you so much cos I wouldn't have understood it at all if not for seeing this!
@Elizabeth Connors I think this was my favourite Monday ever!
@Asher unless you're me and put in "Fresh Off The Boat" because you hadn't heard of the other show before and couldn't remember the setting (Florida not Toronto). It even has the same number of letters!
@Barry Ancona crazy ("stoked" if you will) to see both you and Andrzej in my replies! I know that you can't put punctuation in an answer, I meant the clue could have had an apostrophe after the dashes so it was more obvious that the word was a contraction: "__' to go (stoked)". Admittedly that might be a bit too obvious... To be fair and on a bit of reflection, I think I've spelling it wrong my whole life and thought it was "rearing to go"! Like a lot of the phrases in this one, I don't use it a lot to begin with so "ready" came to mind much faster, even if it wasn't a good (or correct) fit.
@SBK exactly what I mean! Though I don't think I've seen one with an apostrophe now that I think about it - maybe it's part of the style guide that you can't do it that way, or it's just rare to have a contraction in the first place?
My fastest Thursday yet and I only got the theme two-thirds of the way through! And here I was dreading that I had missed a rebus.
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