** Moliere's Harpagon, e.g. **: SUNDAY, Feb. 10, 2008 - Bill Zais

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Reverse English" - all theme answers are structured as "x's y," where "x" and "y" are opposites / antonyms.

I found this puzzle dull and clunky. The theme answers have no sizzle, no pop - they're just awkward possessive phrases. Another problem: the "opposite" words involved often do not feel like natural pairs at all. Specifically, I have issues with GO'S RETURN, CASH'S CHARGE, and PARK'S DRIVE. GO's natural opposite is COME, CASH'S natural counterpart is CREDIT (notice I say "counterpart" and not "opposite" at all - some people still use "checks," despite the pressure from the obnoxious Visa Check Card commercials). And as for PARK, it has no natural opposite. If PARK is an action, then you have to DRIVE to do it. If it's a gear, then somebody ought to tell REVERSE he no longer matters. Poor REVERSE. My main problem, though, was that the phrases are both meaningless and unfunny. They have no sense of humor, and that possessive "S" - something about it - it's like the tape holding a pair of old glasses together at the bridge. Distracting and unbecoming. There are several things to like about this puzzle (more below) but the theme is not one of them.

Theme answers:

  • 22A: Part of a blouse that touches the waist? (top's bottom) - I hit this theme answer first, and early, and, not realizing it was a theme answer, I got so irked that I actually stopped my puzzle to look up "top's bottom" - and "topsbottom." No such thing. After a few grimacing moments, it dawned on me that this weird nothing answer might in fact be part of today's theme. More grimaces ensued.
  • 23A: The real scoop about lipids? (fat's skinny)
  • 33A: Underage child of a military officer? (major's minor) - took me a while to see MAJOR because O My God I had No Idea that MALPH was RALPH's last name (33D: "Happy Days" character). I watched "Happy Days" religiously as a child, and I thought that a. they were calling him RALPH MOUTH, and b. whatever they were calling him, it was a nickname, not his Actual Name. Yipe.
  • 38A: Nonsense of a market pessimist? (bear's bull)
  • 53A: Toil of a Broadway show? (play's work)
  • 55A: Match for a bad guy? (heavy's light) - I had the "H" and wrote in HEEL'S ... not sure what word I was waiting for. TOE?
  • 78A: What can produce a "boing!"? (spring's fall)
  • 82A: Ardor of a new employee? (hire's fire) - this clue should have had something to do with the new employee's being an arsonist.
  • 93A: Comeback of a Japanese game? (go's return)
  • 95A: Singer Johnny's gallop? (cash's charge) - man I hate the "gallop" part of this clue. A "gallop" is a CHARGE!? How about [Singer Johnny's cry of "J'accuse!"]?
  • 113A: Privilege of liberals? (left's right)
  • 115A: Road in Yellowstone? (park's drive)

So many theme answers. I should be impressed, but I just feel beleaguered.

The rest:

  • 10A: Puzzle page favorite (rebus) - first of all, my "puzzle page" doesn't have one of these. Second, I challenge that the REBUS is anybody's "favorite." Pleasant diversion, perhaps. "Favorite," no.
  • 20A: Communist's belief (utopianism) - hmmm ... don't all governments think their way is the most awesome? I understand that there is an idealized vision driving Communism (one that has never come close to being realized), and yet this clue seems somehow unfair. A belief that a free market economy will create the best of all possible worlds is its own kind of utopianism (perhaps a preferable one, but still... I'm just sayin').
  • 25A: Portion of a drag queen's wardrobe (boas) - I feel like BOA is the new EMU. Feels as if it's in half my puzzles these days.
  • 26A: Bumptious (pushy) - "Bumptious" sounds like a made-up word, the kind where you can infer the meaning based on how it sounds, i.e. a "bumptious" person will "bump" you. I'm not sure I knew that "bumptious" was an actual word.
  • 27A: Toy company that launched Rubik's Cube (Ideal) - ah, the 80s. Watched "Sixteen Candles" last night with my wife (who had never seen it). Few movies were as formative of my ... what should we call them ... sensibilities? My manner of speaking? Seeing the world? I think that movie (along with "The Breakfast Club," "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Manhattan," and "Dazed and Confused") affected my sense of humor a lot, down to the intonation of my voice. It was weird to watch the movie and think "I've been stealing from this movie every day of my life for the past quarter century." So if you've got a problem with my style, blame John Hughes. While you're at it, please ask him to explain what hellish desperation drove him to make "Baby's Day Out."
  • 31A: Professional with an x-ray machine: Abbr. (DDS) - that's your clue for DDS?! An x-ray machine? Ugh.
  • 47A: Biblical birthright seller (Esau) - I feel like he's not frequenting the puzzle as much as he used to. I sort of miss him.
  • 51A: Pianist Dame Myra (Hess) - no clue
  • 52A: Missy Elliott's "_____ What I'm Talkin' About" ("Dat's") - this title should at least be consistently colloquial and drop the "A" in "About."
  • 60A: Italian port on the Adriatic (Bari) - aargh. Totally forgot about this place. Had the BAR-, and am just glad that the "I"-crossing, BAHAIS (38D: Believers in the spiritual unity of all people), was familiar, in that I remembered it from Yesterday's Puzzle.
  • 62A: Sam's Club competitor (Costco) - We had these in Fresno, but I haven't seen one since moving away from California.
  • 75A: E-mail directive (fwd) - FWD is a "directive" ...yeah, I guess.
  • 84A: Bookstore sect. (biog.) - Quite an ugly abbreviation, like PHOTOG.
  • 98A: It can be measured in gigs (RAM)
  • 105A: Moliere's Harpagon, e.g. (Miser) - I would break into the scene from "The Breakfast Club" wherein Johnny opines that "Molay" really "pumps my nads," but I've done that before. Instead I'll just say that I read Molière a lot in Mr. Cardella's French classes in high school, and that, truth be told, Mr. Cardella and Mr. Berglund (English) were probably at least as influential in my life as John Hughes films. Probably. The fact that my life included John Hughes films and Molière, side-by-side, pretty much says it all.
  • 119A: Darlin' (sweetie pie) - had SWEET HEART, which fits, ugh. I call my wife "SWEET HEART," but she would (rightly) laugh in my face if I called her "SWEETIE PIE."
  • 122A: Reason to take Valium (tenseness) - In America, we call this TENSION! I can barely even say "tenseness," it feels so wrong.
  • 2D: Accidents (haps) - this answer hurts too. Not as much as tenseness, but enough.
  • 10D: Patriot Putnam of the American Revolution (Rufus) - one of my biggest searches yesterday (when people apparently start doing the Sunday puzzle); [Patriot Putnam] has been a clue before, hence yesterday's (and likely today's) Google traffic.
  • 12D: Equivocator's choice (both) - hmmm ... isn't that really the glutton's choice?
  • 15D: City WNW of Stillwater (Enid) - so iconic is ENID in the world of puzzles that you can hide it behind a completely bland and unspecific clue like this.
  • 13D: Child-raiser's cry (upsy-daisy) - well that's just brilliant. No sarcasm there. A seriously great clue.
  • 16D: Francois Truffaut's field (ciné) - I'm not the biggest fan, though "Shoot the Piano Player" was pretty good.
  • 26D: Literally, "fish tooth" (piranha) - I like "fish tooth" better. It's a name I am now hankering to call someone, as part of a sarcastic phrase, e.g. "smooth move, fish tooth!"
  • 29D: Lewis Carroll creature (snark) - Twas brillig etc. SNARK is a great word.
  • 35D: Villain in "Martin Chuzzlewit" (Jonas) - needed all the crosses, as I usually do for Dickensian clues.
  • 37D: Turkish hospice (imaret) - high-end stuff. Haven't seen it for a while.
  • 49D: Refuse holder (ash can) - are these the names of the things outside of buildings where the top functions as an ASH tray and the underneath part is a trash CAN?
  • 63D: It's kept within the lines, usually (crayon) - I think this is probably verifiably false. In fact, once you get old enough to color consistently within the lines, you are probably too old to want to be coloring with crayons any more.
  • 65D: Sully (smirch) - the word "smatch" is used in "Julius Caesar," and during class the other day, I liked the sound of the word, and the feel of it in my mouth, so much that I found as many opportunities as I could to say it. Here's Brutus, just before his acrobatic suicide:
I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord:
Thou art a fellow of a good respect;
Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it:
Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,
While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?
Smatch! SMIRCH is uglier, but in the ballpark. Then there's the little-known month between March and April, SMARCH. Lousy SMARCH weather!
  • 80D: Ukulele activity (strumming) - true enough.
  • 87D: Erymanthian _____, fourth labor of Hercules (Boar) - super proud to have remembered this. I went through a Hercules phase a little while back ... long story.
  • 106D: "The Lay of the Host of _____" (old Russian epic poem) (Igor) - I like my IGORs Frankensteinian.
  • 112D: 1,000 smackers (gee) - much much better than ["____ whiz!"].
  • 102D: Moola (gelt) - Now this is one ugly word. Is it a welt, is it a kind of fish you eat at seders, is it a castrated horse ... who can tell?

Whew. Done.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

59 comments:

Liz 9:22 AM  

31A: Professional with an x-ray machine: Abbr. (DDS)

I loved this clue because our dentist views his X-ray machine as a cash cow and doesn't take kindly to clients who refuse the routine ones.

102D: Moola (gelt) Gelt comes from the German word for money. Geld is the word for castrate.

Bumptious has been in the lexicon since the early 1800s, I was familiar with the word and a Google search came up with 283 hits.

Anonymous 9:35 AM  

MALPH made me believe I'd finally seen a NYT typo.

ASH CAN in my experience goes back to the time when people burned coal for residential heating. The fused residue, called clinkers, was removed from the furnace, allowed to cool and deposited into a metal drum referred to as an ash can.

Anonymous 9:36 AM  

Rex, it was only after reading your comments on PARK and DRIVE that I realized they were referring to positions on the automatic shifter thingy

DONALD 9:37 AM  

Nicely done!

Anonymous 9:46 AM  

Smarch comes after December.

Anonymous 10:13 AM  

I don't get "go's return." I mean I got it but don't understand it - is "Go" a Japanese game - what kind of game? Must have missed it.

Ulrich 10:19 AM  

I hate to disagree with Rex--he's the pro, I'm the amateur. But hey, what are blogs for?

I liked this theme. I found most of the theme answers funny or unexpected, yet unforced (I can't count how often I have been asked "cash or charge?"). I was also surprised that so many pairs could be found based on the simple idea of reversion. Most importantly, having found the theme right away by sailing through the SW corner, I was proud of myself for finding theme answers without a single cross given (like bear's bull, which really made me laugh). My only complaint about the theme is that the title looks uninspired or off to me.

I agree with sone of the complaints about the clues or answers (haps?).

Finally, a question: Which cheer starts with "sis"?

Rex Parker 10:28 AM  

@Ulrich,

Though you are dead wrong ... :) ... I do appreciate your civility.

No need to preface your disagreements with me. Next time, jump right in.

Best,
RP

Unknown 10:34 AM  

sis boom bah


etc

Unknown 10:42 AM  

Puzzle was fine but I did think it had too many obscure crossings in the Midlands.

My real question though is do you think WIll found an old file of Crosswords from the past? I think this is the second day in a row the puzzle came from someone on hiatus for about a decade. Maybe, he just saved them for a rainy day in Smarch.

Bill from NJ 10:48 AM  

I got the impression that the constructor is not a native-English speaker (haps, tenseness,ashcan).

Your observation about Moliere and John Hughes shows something about the nature of a puzzle solver. In my case it is mathematics and Bernard Malamud.

I really wanted 48A to be HELEN. It held me up in the West for a while.

I thought SIS at 14D referred to the cheer SYS BOOM BAH,

Random observations.

Ulrich 10:52 AM  

@Liz: The German word for money is "Geld". "Gelt" is the Yiddish version used in slang according to TheFreeDictionary.

Anonymous 10:52 AM  

@Phillysolver

sis boom baa (var)

... not only a cheer, but as "Carnac the Great" (aka Johnny Carson) pointed out, it's also the answer to the question:

"What is the sound of an exploading sheep?"

.../Glitch

Anonymous 10:56 AM  

Harrietlou -- Go is indeed a very popular Japanese strategy game -- a tiny bit like chess, with black and white stones and a grid-style board. It has led to some very strong displays of emotion in our home. I no longer play. . .

Speaking of which

Rex, assuming you are done with breakfast, I will gross you out by telling you that our mutual friend, my husband, has at times called me SWEETIE PIE.

Orange 11:05 AM  

Liz, I got 125,000 Google hits for bumptious.

Rex: Medium difficulty? Are you nuts?? This was one of the easiest Sunday NYT puzzles I can remember. I thought my solving time was fast, but then Byron, Stella, and Howard came along and all cleared 6:30. Super-easy!

Anonymous 11:08 AM  

Can't remember the last time I saw a ukelele strum...oh, yeah, never. I did like "child-raiser's cry" for UPSYDAISY. I see I don't know my Herculaean Labors very well.

I wonder what "The Lay of the Host of Igor" means. I have no idea. Sounds obtuse, even as a poem title. Can someone supply IGNORANCES' KNOWLEDGE? Thanks.

Anonymous 11:10 AM  

Dear Rex --

Loved your curmudgeonly discourse and tongue-in-cheek quips (Oops, I forgot you said you don't partake of Tongue -- it was a favorite snack of mother's on a sandwich, but I was never forced to try it, and wouldn't have).

I can just picture you in snarky humor, with a little smirk or choked-back chortle, as you toss out tiny fish-hooks of free association like GELT to "gelding", then lounge back waiting to see who'll bite. Much fun!

I liked the puzzle a bit better than you did, apparently. Started in the far northeast with AMYL, and worked down the whole right half, then up to finish clockwise at the inelegant TOP'S BOTTOM. Very much enjoyed the theme answers encountered in that order!

No quibble with GO'S RETURN, fits fine to me since return means "come back", opposite of "go", and it brought back good memories of Go games in grad school. Lots of smiles in novel SIS as start of a cheer "SIS Boom Bah" and "boing" as part of the clue for SPRING'S FALL.

More fun words in UPSY-DAISY, HOTSY-totsy, ITTY-bitty, -- and IMARET was a welcome long-time-no-see. Again, that last brings back a vision of the warm but THIRD-RATE place where I stayed in Turkey! Indoor toilet yes, but only literally a hole in the floor, with handles on the side walls so one didn't lose one's balance. I don't mean to offend anyone but that's the way it was. And we ate dusk to dawn only, since it was Ramadan.

Happy Rest of Sunday to All! ∑;)

Quentin 11:16 AM  

Just wanted to say that, while a few of the theme answers are kinda forced, quite a few of them are actually pretty clever (I really like SPRING'S FALL and LEFT'S RIGHT, as they both take good advantage of double meanings in those words.)

Also, I wanted to remind everyone that SMARCH is the 13th month of the year... it can't possibly between March and April!

Thanks

southernfriedjordan 11:26 AM  

I don't consider myself a whiz at solving the puzzle, even though I do it (or come close) all seven days. But there were a couple (TOP'S BOTTOM, and MAJOR'S MINOR, e.g.) where I said, "Please, don't let it be this easy." I like a little more oomph out of my Sunday puzzle.

PuzzleGirl 11:30 AM  

As I solved the puzzle last night I thought to myself, "Oh Rex is gonna HATE this theme."

Your GELD comment reminded me of when I used to go to the track occasionally in New York. Before the races they make announcements about changes of equipment, scratched horses, etc. Every once in a while you'd hear something like, "And in the fifth, [Horse 1] is wearing blinders, and [Horse 2] is now a gelding." Ouch.

Unknown 11:40 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous 11:43 AM  

Well said, Rex. After I saw the title, I wanted the theme answers to run in reverse. I actually had RINOM working at the end of 33A before I caught on. After that, it was just kind of a matter of slogging through it. Nary a chuckle in the bunch -- except maybe LEFTSRIGHT since the leftists out here in Berkeley (although I often agree with their stands)take so much for granted.

Unknown 11:43 AM  

My sister wants me to post our 1965 cheerleading humor (we did not make it up, but laughed at it) so here it is:

Sis boom ree!
kick 'em in the knee

Sis boom ras!
Kick 'em in the other knee.

Anonymous 11:45 AM  

I thought the top third of this was harder than the rest which was pretty easy. I also didn't mind the theme and getting it early really accelerated the processes. I had issues with HAPS (?) and BOAS being plural (don't most drag queen wear just one?) but generally liked the fill.

BTW ROM is measured in gigs and GOTTO is also informal (non-standard). Seems like either one works.

Unknown 11:45 AM  

Rex, LOVE your blog. Been reading on Sundays for several months now, but this is my first comment:

GELT (at least we know the derivation) is not as bad as MOOLA. Where does that word come from and who decides about whether to use a final "H"?

PARK and DRIVE reminded me of the question: Why do we PARK in a DRIVEway and DRIVE on the PARKway?

Looking forward to next Sunday.

Anonymous 12:01 PM  

Phillysolver

Love your cheer!!!!
Go giants

Anonymous 12:33 PM  

HAP is very Shakespeare. Also part of mayhap which became maybe.

When I was a kid in the 40s, we had a cheer:
SIS BOOM BAH, RAH RAH RAH
THROW EM IN THE ASHCAN, HA HA HA.
How's that for tying two obscure answers together?

Anonymous 12:54 PM  

This theme with its' forced 's' possessives to make it have the sense of reverse cleverness it so desired, can only said to be composed of soxymorons.

russalka 12:55 PM  

"The Lay of the host of Igor" or rather "The Lay of Igor's Host" is
a poetic saga of the Russian Prince
Igor's army fight against the tribe
of khazars.I've read it in Russian at school as "Slovo o polku Igoreve" (in Russia).

Anonymous 12:57 PM  

Haps just doesn't rest well with me. Yes, an accident is one of a bazillion things that could be defined as a "happening", but seems a long stretch from the more direct mishap.

I'm still "clueless" as to what the F.G.'s or the answer T.D.'s is a reference to? The only T.D.'s I know of are M.G.'s, and both of those are great ;)

Anonymous 1:03 PM  

andy - field goal and touch down

Unknown 1:07 PM  

andy,
I'm usually clueless when it comes to football, but I believe the F.G.'s are Field Goals and the T.D.'s are Touch Downs.

Anonymous 1:41 PM  

Today's puzzle was among the easiest I can ever remember, but I finally had to Google Putnam (10D), as my answer of Silas was giving me the fits. Also, my answer of denegrate at 1A caused a real whack to the head when third rate came to me. (Feel like a third rate solver.) I didn't mind the theme - everything moved along very quickly, but I totally agree regarding words like haps (mishaps would be better)and tenseness (too much slipping on the tongue for that one.) Having grown up in NYC, ashcans were the silvery-metal things at the landlord would noisily drag to the curb at 5 AM. I still refer to my green Rubbermaids as ashcans. Ralph Malph was my favorite Happy Days char. His tag line: "I still got it."

PuzzleGirl 1:59 PM  

@crswrdlvr22: I entered SILAS for RUFUS too. Bizarre.

Anonymous 3:08 PM  

Rex, while I agree about the puzzle seeming clunky, I think you're being a little harsh on some theme answers.

I sort of like Go/Return, Cash/Charge and Park/Drive.

One can GO to the store by getting in the car and DRIVing there. At the store you PARK the car and enter the store, make your purchases and then you decide whether to pay by CASH or to CHARGE the purchase. You then put your stuff in the trunk, take the car out of PARK and put it back into DRIVE and RETURN home with your purchases.

Michael Chibnik 3:18 PM  

I thought this problem was of about average difficulty for a Sunday though I felt sluggish doing it (about 6 X Orange speed.) It seemed clunky for reasons that Rex has explained well.

Anonymous 3:23 PM  

I got the impression (after back-dooring the answer) that "Communist's" in 20A does not refer to Soviet Russia so much as Unwashed Hippie. Another odd usage in a puzzle rife with them.

James F 3:57 PM  

I enjoyed the puzzle today, and thought the theme answers were entertaining, especially the LEFTSRIGHT (which I believe in). After yesterday it was nice to have an easier time of things. I wish I could spell better (PIRANAH led me astray for a while) but otherwise no troubles.

The real reason to comment is bring up the old joke about New York, where we DRIVE in the PARKways and PARK in the DRIVEways.

miriam b 4:01 PM  

The libretto for the opera Prince Igor was adapted from the epic poem, The Lay of Igor's Host. Borodin died before finishing the work and it was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov. And THEN, much later, the music was used for Kismet.

Anonymous 4:32 PM  

Reverse English made me think of my old pool playing days. It is the draw shot, the cue going backwards after hitting the target ball. At first,I thought it was a pool theme after top, bottom, left, right - all English shots.

Craig Richard Nelson 6:21 PM  

Oh, this is a wonderful find! Thank you "Rex" and all the bloggers. I'll be visiting again and again. I sort of hoped for a more clever theme, as well. I did enjoy it, however. I'm happy I'm not the only one who gritted my teeth over tenseness.

Anonymous 6:22 PM  

The first theme answer to fall for me was 113A and then (unusually for me) I whipped through the other theme answers in a row. While I agree with the comments about the clunkiness of the theme, I thought the idiomatic use of SKINNY in 23A was relatively PHAT, or at least smile-worthy.

It would have been a good day, except I 1) expected 13D with its "?" to be a themed answer and 2) was in consonant guessing land for the second and fourth letters of 45A, with no obvious support from the downs. I eventually sorted out problem 1 and realized only afterwards that thoughts of symmetry would have made the process faster. Alas, a wonderful two weeks last summer in Turkey didn't help with problem 2, so I met my downfall with M&N.

Anonymous 6:43 PM  

Rex--since you are teaching comics, you may be interested in knowing that ASHCAN is also a term from the Golden Age of comics. It referred to any rushed and usually incomplete (unlettered, uncolored, uninked) comic, published simply to stake a legal claim on a Really Neat Name, Title, or Character. They were printed in extremely limited editions and most of the copies were thrown into the ASHCAN right away. Some of them are now valuable collectibles.

In modern comic book usage, ASHCAN means a book that is printed in a cheap edition, usually as a free giveaway, like a little 8 page Spider-Man pamphlet in your cereal box.

Bill from NJ 9:05 PM  

I think the only time I've encountered the word HAPS in real life was in a James Lee Burke novel where one character always greets the other with "What's the haps, Dave?".

Must be a New Orleans thing.

DrGreene 9:19 PM  

Jae,
I agree! I quickly filled in "Got To" for "Must, informally" in 79D -- and didn't see a reason to change, because ROM is measured in gigs for 98A.

I can't remember another Times puzzle where two answers really work for both sides of the cross -- do you Rex? Anybody else?

Anonymous 10:05 PM  

you lived in fresno?? i learn something new about you in this blog everyday! that's where i am currently!

Anonymous 10:17 PM  

Not the most enjoyable Sunday puzzle, but it did have its moments (smirch, snark, .....no, it wasnt great. Btw, geld is also the word for money in Dutch.

Anonymous 11:45 PM  

i liked this puzzle a lot -- i blew through it faster than usual for a Sunday, around 25 mins., and was very satisfied all the way with the clever theme, intesting fill and clues that were just difficult to deliver some "aha" moments.

kudos to the constructor and i hope to see your work again soon.

Unknown 12:10 AM  

@drgreene

On the eve of the election in 1996, the NYT crossword had a clue, "Winner of tomorrow's election". Depending on how you did the downs, CLINTON or BOBDOLE was the across.

Pretty fancy stuff...a real xword classic. You can get the puzzle from JimH's blog or cruciverb.

Unknown 12:32 AM  

I love the way life works. I had no idea it was posted when I wrote the response above, but I just read JimH's BLog for Monday and he lists a series of noteworthy crosswords and writes this note...

Tuesday, November 05, 1996 by J. Farrell

JNotes: This amazing puzzle appeared the morning of the 1996 U.S. presidential election. The answer word at 39 Across can be filled in with either CLINTON or BOBDOLE and all the crossing down clues work either way.

Go check it out and you can see it.

Anonymous 1:11 AM  

I seem to remember a Sunday puzzle within the last 6 months or so that had a clue go two ways. Rex had it the way not accepted by the applet but it was also correct. I think the answer started with "R" but thats all I remember.

voiceofsocietyman 11:07 AM  

I'm glad so many people liked it, bc then I won't feel bad for voicing my strong dislike for this puzzle. I hated the forcedness (TENSENESS) of the theme answers and some of the fill and clues. Basically my complaints were yours, Rex.

Did anyone do well with Will's 3-D word search? Those are actually my favorite puzzles, ever! As a Scrabble player, the Boggle-like quality is right up my alley, and it turns out that my spacial limitations aren't as bad as I'd thought.

I'll post more about it on my newpaltz.blogspot blog.

-- David

DrGreene 4:09 PM  

Thanks for the tip about the 1996 puzzle. What a gem! Now I am grateful to the current puzzle -- otherwise I might have never seen this 96 classic.

Anonymous 4:41 PM  

DRIVE: Make your car move.

PARK: Make your car stop.

Seemed natural to me.

Anonymous 10:50 PM  

I'm siding with the others that thought this was easy. One of my fastest Sunday puzzles ever. Never got stuck, methodically plowed through - which is fine by me, it's nice to have an easy Sunday puzzle now and then, it gives me more time on a Sunday.

fotos4fun 3:08 PM  

I am a rookie NYT Sunday puzzle solver and it was only the second time that I got close to finishing one. I have always been afraid of tackling the Sunday NYT until a few months ago and now I am addicted. I spend all week on it usually and never finish it but this one I got all but the bottom right corner by Sunday night and I'm darn proud of myself. You guys who do it under 10 mins blow my mind ... lol. It sure is fun tho.

fotos4fun 3:08 PM  

I am a rookie NYT Sunday puzzle solver and it was only the second time that I got close to finishing one. I have always been afraid of tackling the Sunday NYT until a few months ago and now I am addicted. I spend all week on it usually and never finish it but this one I got all but the bottom right corner by Sunday night and I'm darn proud of myself. You guys who do it under 10 mins blow my mind ... lol. It sure is fun tho.

fotos4fun 3:08 PM  

I am a rookie NYT Sunday puzzle solver and it was only the second time that I got close to finishing one. I have always been afraid of tackling the Sunday NYT until a few months ago and now I am addicted. I spend all week on it usually and never finish it but this one I got all but the bottom right corner by Sunday night and I'm darn proud of myself. You guys who do it under 10 mins blow my mind ... lol. It sure is fun tho.

impjb 6:12 PM  

I'd have to say that since I was able to finish this without googling that it should be rated as an easy. I enjoyed it though!

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