SATURDAY, Mar. 1, 2008 - Brendan Emmett Quigley (BOHO-CHIC FOOTWEAR)

Saturday, March 1, 2008


Relative difficulty: Super-Hard

THEME: none

This puzzle was indeed hard as hell. I just finished it, sitting here on Monday morning after the tournament, and I had two errors. So much for being the 55th best solver in the known universe.

My Errors:

CANIS for CANID (28D: Wolf, e.g.)
SUENA for DUENA (46A: Spanish mistress)

and

MISDIAL for MISDEAL (51A: Distribution slip)
INNA for ENNA (52D: Italian province or its capital)

Not sure which error is stupider. You be the judge.

Highlights:

1A: Event in which teams may drink rounds during rounds (pub quiz) - great clue / answer, though, never having participated in one, it took me forever to get. Q and Z!
17A: Conditioning system (pilates) - was tipped off to the possible answer of this one by commenter "mac" at the tournament. She said that she couldn't believe she failed to get the answer, as she did the answer every day.
21A: 1920s birth control advocate Russell (Dora) - nooooo idea. I'm sure wife would have known this.
22A: Author of "Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why Nafta Must Be Stopped - Now!" (Perot) - this guy! Two-time independent presidential candidate, full-time eccentric billionaire.
24A: Name on some euros (Eire) - good way to hide this relatively common answer.
25A: They may be found in sneakers (odors) - look, I found an odor!
27A: "_____ vindice" (Confederacy motto) ("Deo") - "Under God, Our Vindicator" - guess God was on vacation or something during the Civil War.
31A: Place on a game board? (St. James) - as in "St. James Place" in Monopoly. Clever.
33A: A.L. home run champ of 1950 and '53 (Al Rosen) - full name, and one that would not have come to me readily had it not been for my having seen it in xwords before.
38A: Often-minimized thing (window) - got it off the "W," the only thing I had resembling a good instinct during this entire puzzle.
48A: Cuts into a pie, often (radii) - rough rough rough for me, all because I was sure that 48D: Zagat contributor was EATER. Consequently, I had EIGHT for the answer here at first. As in "let me cut your pizza pie into EIGHT pieces for you, sir."
50A: Field fare, briefly (MREs) - hot dogs? Some movie starring Sally Field? No - Meals Ready-to-Eat (another word I learned from xwords).
53A: Ostensible composer of "The Abduction of Figaro" and "Oedipus Tex" (PDQ Bach) - never really heard this guy, thus, didn't know his composing was "ostensible."
56A: Bennett of the Ronettes (Estelle) - had --TELLE ... not much choice after that, really.
58A: Bright planet, sometimes (daystar) - never heard the word. It appears to refer primarily to Venus. From Answers.com: "a planet (usually Venus) seen just before sunrise in the eastern sky"
1D: Leader who claimed to have put a fatal curse on J.F.K. (Papa Doc) - took a while, even with the terminal "C," but that's only because I couldn't give up IDI AMIN. My brain wouldn't let me.
2D: Cousin of Ascii (unicode) - my techno-ignorance continues.
4D: Some radio sources (quasars) - is this a brand name? No. Well, yes, but not here. Turns out QUASAR is a contraction of QUASi-stellAR radio source
5D: "'_____ Me?' I do not know you" (Emily Dickinson) ("'Unto'") - this makes little to no grammatical sense as quoted. Of all the ways to clue UNTO...
7D: Zipped up (zested) - is this ... like "spiced up" or "pepped up?" Yes. ZIP and ZEST are virtual synonyms as verbs. The "up" part of the clue here is unnecessary, and adds the misdirection (that direction: flywards).
8D: Boho-chic footwear (Ugg Boots) - sadly, this answer was given away to me, so knew it was coming. It's gorgeous, as fill goes. "Boho" is a shortened form of "bohemian," but seems also to want to play on the hip urbanity of SOHO (or the unhip rurality of HOBO).
10D: Old marketplace surrounder (stoa) - you ever know something and have no idea how or why? That's what happened here. I think "marketplace" made me think AGORA ... and somehow that triggered STOA, a word I couldn't have defined precisely, but that I knew was right here.
12D: Function whose domain is between -1 and 1 (arcsine) - much kerfuffle over this. Read comments.
14D: First pitcher to have defeated all 30 major-league teams (Leiter) - Al LEITER. I know who he is. I can picture him. So why I had LEITEL for a while, I'll never know.
36D: Bristly appendages (aristas) - thank god for crossword experience
40D: 20th-century German leader's moniker (Der Alte) - thank god for crossword experience x 2. Readers filled me in on the existence of this "moniker" many months ago, when I blogged ALTE for some now-forgotten reason.
45D: Man and others (bipeds) - not CANIDS. BIPEDS. Okay.

This BIPED has got to get some exercise. Sunday puzzle blog later in the day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Here's more evidence that Emily Cureton is a badass...

[Visit her store here]

61 comments:

fergus 9:22 PM  

Copied from today's other posting section, where there are quite a few other comments on the Saturday puzzle (couldn't resist the opportunity to open):


Typical of this puzzle was the trigonometry clue. Scribbled in TANGENT of course, then got increasingly unsure about about the entries as I recalled the proper meaning of domain and range with respect to functions. If the clue included Range, and not Domain, then TANGENT would be fine, but it didn't. Ah, dear old ARCSINE ...
But then I had PULSARS instead of QUASARS. You think you've pulled out a nifty answer, only to be crestfallen. Confoundingly impressive construction.

My best errors were WRINGER for the Mop holder? clue, and PAVLIAN for the Conditioning system. PAPA DOC and RADII were my most revelatory, and spent a long time trying to find an alternative spelling for HUARACHES to fit in where UGG BOOTS stood.

Anonymous 9:37 PM  

FYI, the range of tan is -infinity to infinity.

fergus 10:04 PM  

Oh yeah -- shows how messed my thinking was by then. Thanks for pointing this out.

Anonymous 10:23 PM  

Good idea fergus -- here are my initial comments plus a little more.

Today's BEQ was indeed challenging. I finished last night with one error at the CANDID/DUENA crossing (had an S instead of D.) I even discussed whether DUENA would be correct with my spanish major wife. She thought DUENA was an elder female person who was in charge of the household/children. Her Spanish dict. does give mistress as second definition. Of course, there is no entry for SUENA which sounds a little like SWAIN and really seemed to fit! CANIS on the other hand is an appropriate (but not correct) answer for 28d. Ah well, on to Sunday.

My hang up in NE was initially putting GOULASH for GNOCCHI. My initial thoughts for NW were PUB something and PAPADOC which CESSNA confirmed so NW wasn't a problem for me. Had BEING for 45d in SE but changing to BIPED gave me PDQBACH which opened up the whole area (except for the DUENA error). Also had EATER for RATER (48d) for a while. So this was a slow but steady process for me. I'm never happy with an error but I don't feel to bad with only one and no googling on a puzzle this difficult.

Aviatrix 11:49 PM  

Awesome. I look forward to seeing your rank move up in the sidebar. What's your connection to Vancouver?

Rex Parker 11:54 PM  

I have no connection to Vancouver. The interviewer just wrote me and asked if she could do an interview. She found me by Googling a clue, I guess. Anyway, the interview was entertaining - a good conversation. I only hope it comes out well in print.

Anonymous 12:13 AM  

First off, Rex (and anyone else), good luck with the rest of the tournament!

As for Saturday's puzzle - ARGH! I did relatively well on the South. It helped that I'm a PDQ Bach fan AND I got to interview Ronnie Spector a couple of months ago and she mentioned her cousin ESTELLE Bennett.

However, I had HAIRNET instead of HAIRGEL for quite a while.

But the North was just a mess. I bit the bullet and just Googled away, and it STILL took me forever. I am rather embarrassed that I couldn't remember that Al LEITER was the first pitcher to beat all 30 teams in the majors.

UGGBOOTS gets my WTF award for the day. (Obviously I'm not a boho-chic kinda guy.) UNICODE and ARCSINE are close behind. I initially wanted OLD PROS for the work team, rather than REHIRES.

Favorite answer was definitely ONECLAM for part of a fin, and I kinda liked STAINER and CANER in the same puzzle.

Again, best of luck to all the participants, and I'll look forward to hearing the details.

wendy 9:11 AM  

Way to kick it into high gear, Rex!

The Vancouver article has the potential, btw, of going national because the Sun is part of the Canadian media chain Canada.com, which has properties in Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria, Regina, Saskatoon, Windsor, Ottawa and Montreal, plus it owns the National Post, which is the *other* national newspaper vs. the Globe and Mail. As a regular reader of Canadian media I can tell you stuff regularly appears in more than the outlet where it was originated. Not saying it will, but it could!

Anonymous 9:14 AM  

An arc-function is the angle whose sine, cosine, or tangent (as the case maybe) is x. X may vary between -1 and 1 for a sine or cosine (though not for a tangent), but an arcsine itself will be an angle from 0 to 360 degrees, or from from 0 to 2 Pi radians. It was clear from the crosses that this answer should be arcsine, but I don't think it fits with trig reality.

Anonymous 11:30 AM  

Hey, guys --

This is Sunday! Wish you'd post your arcane arcsine musings for Saturday on the previous page for comments!!!

Today's puzzle was much more doable than yesterday's -- anyone disagree? The moving of one letter "Forward Thinking" in the theme answers was amusing: I especially liked the last one, COPY BOZ, and 41A STAR HAZER was good too. The others included KOOL BID, DADDY SHACK, NIXED DRINKS, SPY BEANS, and LOX PROFILE which was funny too. If 52A was another, please explain? (JV DRIPS)...

∑;)

Anonymous 11:32 AM  

Missed mention of at least one more theme answer" LEG PARTY

Anonymous 11:34 AM  

and MILK DVDS

∑;)

Anonymous 11:36 AM  

and SWISS MIST -- oh well. Good puzzle fun!

∑;)

Anonymous 11:38 AM  

also GOOD FATS didn't grab me, but there it is

Anonymous 11:40 AM  

Last question -- what's POP RUIZ oh, pop quiz

Anonymous 11:52 AM  

Agreed, Anon! My engineer spouse was highly annoyed by the sloppy cluing for ARCSINE. On the other hand, I thought the cluing for RADII was divine (despite the fact that I didn't get it until I saw the completed grid)! Just couldn't steer my mind away from pies, delicious pies! Yep, I fell right into that trap and wallowed in it.

Sorry to be so dense, but I still don't get the answer ONE CLAM for the clue "part of a fin".....

Anyone else have Eames for "chairperson"? Weapons for load-bearing things? Antenni for bristly appendages?

My favorite cross is UGG BOOTS with GNOCCHI. Very fun! But overall, Mr. Quigley's puzzle kicked my Ascii!

Rock Rabbit

Anonymous 12:46 PM  

@artlvr - JVDRIPS => IV Drips. GOODFATS - Food fats, I guess? Did not rock. But I liked this puzzle - it was fun.

@anonymous 11:52 - CLAM is old-timey slang for a dollar, and FIN is similarly old-timey for a five-dollar bill. and I felt ascii-kicked too.

PS - miss RP.

Anonymous 12:57 PM  

Good eats --> good fats.

Anonymous 2:27 PM  

Joanee --Thanks, I did get "IV Drips" but then realized it wasn't that obscure -- GOOD FATS could go your way, but I like the answer "good eats" better... (Not sure those fats are healthiest; maybe we have a double here! )

Anyway, I counted 12 theme clues and thought that was great, and they were all rather funny in retrospect! The fill wasn't trite either...

∑;)

Anonymous 2:41 PM  

Aha! GOOD EATS. That makes sense.

imsdave1 2:44 PM  

JV = junior varsity - very dull puzzle for a sunday, very clever theme, but no challenge to it. Hope Rex kicks (!) today.

Anonymous 3:07 PM  

I appreciated the consistency in the theme answers on sunday...

a->b, c->d, e->f...all the way to y->z.

Once you caught on to the pattern, the theme fill fell quickly. Very enjoyable!

patdugg

Anonymous 3:18 PM  

I also liked this one. Patdugg--thanks for pointing out the progessive pattern, didn't see it until I read you post. Nice to have an easier one after yesterday's.

Anonymous 3:56 PM  

That's what the "forward thinking" title meant - advancing one letter one position in the alphabet.

Sorry for the delay in the obsessive arcsine comment. Was trying to figure out the HTML instructions, which didn't mean anything to me.

"Good Eats." Ha. Missed it completely, even when I knew the answer was Good Fats.

Anonymous 4:19 PM  

Hi All,

Just finished a lazy Sunday puzzle after the brutality of Saturday (two googles too many spoiled my perfect week). Sunday was more fun with the clever a to z theme and loads of gimmes mixed in with a few challenging areas. Can't wait to hear how Rex et al do today.

@Rock Rabbit, clam is slang for bucks and a fin is five bucks, so one clam is part of a fin. Took me forever to parse out y-axis. Wondering what a yaxi was.

I liked locks on a dome for wig.

I got a personal chuckle from the Estonian/Swissmist cross. My son's last girlfriend was Estonian and one of his first was Swiss (we called her the Swiss Miss).

Fergus, I can't find anything particularly inspiring in these puzzles to rant and rave about.

@emily...I'm so glad you are sharing your work with the puzzlers. You go, girl!

Anonymous 4:50 PM  

could someone explain 96A milk dvds? Was a fun easy puzzle and I also didn't realize it went from a-z

Anonymous 4:59 PM  

how to film for a dairy farm:

milk as in a kind of dairy product.

dvds as in digital video disk

hope this makes sense.

Anonymous 5:00 PM  

never mind I just got it...milk duds. Use to eat those at the movie theater when they were out of dots

Anonymous 5:33 PM  

Oh, you meant the forward letter part: duds-->dvds Sorry, I thought you didn't understand the final clue.

Anonymous 5:40 PM  

For those of you who are interested, the results are in from the ACPT.

Tyler Hinman won for the fourth time in a row.

All but one of the age divisions were won by former, or present obviously in the case of Tyler, Div. A champions.

Junior: Tyler Hinman
Fifties: Ellen Ripstein
Sixties: Doug Hoylman
Seventies: Bob Rubin
Senior: Miriam Raphael

Draw your own interpretations.

Anonymous 5:42 PM  

Forgot to mention the most important part...

Rex finished 55th overall and 5th in the C Division.

Congratulations Rex!

Anonymous 5:54 PM  

congratulations Rex!!!

Anonymous 7:20 PM  

Rex jumped 111 places! What a feat. Kudos!

I found the puzzle relatively easy - didn't look anything up, but missed a few letters at hard crosses. I liked the theme. I had ironage at 123 across ... clearly wrong & what I have now doesn't makes sense. Can someone tell me what it is? (I miss Rex's answer grid!)

Teresa (Michigan Dreamer)

Anonymous 7:40 PM  

123 across actually is ironage... re-parsed to "Iron Age."

Ulrich 7:50 PM  

I miss Rex to put this plog into order: It defintely opens for the Saturday puzzle, for me at last, and so, I'm commenting on it, even if it Sunday by now (I just returned from the tournament). I found the Sat puzzle hard, but then I'm not used to Saturday puzzles--did this during breaks and the rest after coming home (don't ask how I did at the ACPT--it's too embarassing). One of my biggest problem was that I had Torme as the singer till the end, which gave me 'tamest' for 'most intrepid', which makes no sense. I discovered Gorme only through googling--shame on me;-)

Anonymous 7:50 PM  

If anybody has a clue to the NW of puzzle 5 or to the theme, please email namronv - at - yahoo.com (since I am effing baffled, even after going back to it and plaugging away for -- I won't say how long).

Ulrich 8:52 PM  

Re. ACTP from someone who finished in the top half of the bottom 5% (to put my performance in the best possible light:-)): I did do well compared to my own standards--I finished the first (easiest) puzzle completely and correctly within the given time of 15 min. The next four best had an average of 115 words each, of which I got an avg. of 60% correctly in the time of 30 min given on avg for these puzzles. The hardest for me were puzzles 2 and 5, where I really did not do well. Still, I'm not really ashamed...

...because the general skill level at the tournament is incredibly high, especially when it comes to speed. If you want a competitive score, you have to complete each puzzle (to collect the bonus points given for this), which, in turn, demands practice/practice/practice every day acc. to everyone I talked to. I don't get this practice from doing only the NYT Sunday puzzle per week.

But to those who feel "not ready yet" for the ATCP, I can say this: If you are at peace with yourself when it comes to your own performance, it's an intriguing experience. For example, I got a very good sense of what it would mean for me to become better; I met Rex, Orange and several constructors personally; I had fun doing the puzzles under tournament conditions because I like to challenge my brain--only time will tell if I will switch to doing at least one puzzle per day.

Anonymous 9:15 PM  

Sorry I didn't meet you today, Ulrich. I went to the Brooklyn Marriott this morning to get a feel for the tournament and to watch the finals. It was just wonderful, and I will definitely compete next year. It's just amazing to be among so many kindred spirits, everyone likes to talk to everyone else, even to a coward like me, and I got to meet Karen and her mother, Rex/Michael, who is much taller than I expected after seeing some of his photo's, and Orange, who is much more petite than she looked on MGC. It was also a historic moment for me because I had never crossed the Brooklyn Bridge!
I hope we can get organized next year and figure out a place for all of us Rex-junkies to meet.
Btw, Rock Rabbit, I seriously contemplated Eames as well!

Anonymous 9:15 PM  

http://donaldsweblog.blogspot.com/

for the completed NYT puzzle (scroll way down) -- and also for some pix from the tournament! Rex is reported as 54th there.

Woohoo!

Thanks to Ulrich for his neat first-hand report and congrats to all who tried this speed competition... sounds both daunting and exhilerating!

∑;)

Anonymous 9:47 PM  

That blog also called Tyler Hinman "Trip Payne" and spelled Amy Reynaldo's name wrong so it's not a wealth of accuracy.

Anonymous 8:53 AM  

For the people complaining about "sloppy cluing" for arcsine on Saturday: it is true that the *range* of arcsine is between 0 and 2pi, or 0 and 360 degrees, but the *domain* of arcsine, meaning the acceptable input values of the function, is precisely the numbers from -1 to 1.

So the clue was absolutely correct.

Ulrich 9:12 AM  

@Mac: Excellent idea! Let's keep this in mind when time approaches (the 2009 ACTP will be at he end of February again).

Bill D 10:43 AM  

It's Monday and I'm glad I can still blog about the Saturday puzzle - I found it the toughest in a long, long while - too bad it came up when Rex and our super solvers were away at the tournament! It took me the better part of three hours to finish - my last letter was also the choice between "D" or "S" at CANI_/_UENA. I went with "D" ultimately because I knew DUENA was a valid Spanish word referring to a woman, although I thought it meant chaparone.

Very tough cluing, crosses, and answers. I started with QUASARS and ENTENTE and repeatedly erased them when seemingly good crosses "eliminated" them. PAPADOC/CESSNA was the first real cross I completed, and I worked out very slowly from there, aided by the two baseball Als, LEITER and AL ROSEN, although I needed the aid of crosses to suss them out.

Extremely clever mis-direction cluing made some answers seem like those word games for cash in which the definitions can easily refer to simple words a single letter apart. A lot of you had that problem with HAIRNET instead of HAIRGEL, eg. (I had the G from ALG there, an the H and L were the last letters I filled in for that answer. I had my NET in for DEB for the longest time!) In the WINDOW crosses I had JET for 32D:Faster, maybe (JEW) and DUMBEST for 39D:Least sensible (NUMBEST) for the longest time, convinced of their accuracy. I even had TORME for GORME briefly.

Loved PUB QUIZ, GNOCCHI, REHIRES, ONE CLAM and PDQ BACH, all of which gave me tremendous trouble. This is why I cheered from the sidelines this weekend!

miriam b 2:45 PM  

@ Bill D: Duenna (two n's) does mean chaperone, but a DUEÑA is a female boss, a proprietess or the mistress of an operation of some kind. Feminine form of DUEÑO.

Anonymous 7:05 PM  

I wish to comment on the "arcsine question" as a mathematician, indeed as one who has just taught the topic in his first year calculus class. First the clue is accurate as given: The domain of arcsine is the interval from -1 to 1. Second, the range IS NOT 0 to 360 degrees, as stated in a few posts above. There are three reasons:
1. the values ("outputs") of the function are given in radians, not degrees;
2. the interval from 0 to 2pi (the radian equivalent of 0 to 360 degrees) is too large, by a factor of two, so an interval half the size (i.e., of length pi) is used;
3. while many different intervals of length pi could be used as the range when defining the function, the universal choice is the interval from -pi/2 to +pi/2. Thus, arcsine(x), for x between -1 and 1, is the angle y (there is only one) between -pi/2 and pi/2 for which sin(y) = x. (And, for the record, there are two such angles between 0 and 2pi. So those who would prefer arcsine to have values in that interval would have to give a method to choose between them. There is only one way to make the choice and produce a continuous function and that is to confine the values still further to the interval from pi/2 to 3pi/2. Surely this is no improvement over the usual choice of the interval from -pi/2 to +pi/2.)

Anonymous 8:01 PM  

@miriam b -- thanks for the DUENA/duenna clarification. I didn't discuss spelling with my wife. It should have raised a red flag for me when I told her the answer was SUENA and she said "could be but I've never heard of it."

sonofdad 8:02 PM  

Anonymous 7:05 with the smackdown.

miriam b 8:27 PM  

@jae: De nada (Now I've just about exhausted my Spanish vocabulary.). I'd heard of duenna, but finally Googled DUEÑA in order to find out whether I'd been spelling duenna wrong for years. In the process, I learned something new.

Anonymous 8:38 PM  

I just couldn't get ARC SINE to jibe with Eames! I finally gave up on Eames.
Had to Google the Dickinson clue to finish the puzzle and if I'd only gone back to QUASAR could have finished it without help. Oh well, live and learn.
Is there really such a thing as a PUB QUIZ? Other than what is shown during "Word Play", I mean?

Orange 8:50 PM  

Doc John, a generic term for a weekly trivia contest at a bar is PUB QUIZ. Blame the Brits for loving trivia so much—even some American bar trivia is called "pub quiz."

Mac, petite as in "the camera adds 15 lbs" or as in "the camera adds 5 inches of height"? (Good to meet you!)

Anonymous 9:29 PM  

In sum -- I think anyone who got through this with only one or two errors is in the junior genius class.

The Dickinson quote starting with UNTO was from outer space. Also, "zipped up" should have been something like "Suited" as in "suited up" -- I've never heard of "zip" applied to food (unless Emeril uses it?), nor of "zest" used with a direct object (with or without "up)". And UGG BOOTS? Ugh!

Anyone wishing to go back to the Antagonyms of a few days ago? I'd add three more to the list: "pale" = weak in color/strong enclosure, "confer" = seek advice/give away, and "stood up" = defended a position/abandoned...

∑;)

Bill D 10:25 PM  

Miriam - thanks for the clarification. My last Spanish class was 40 years ago, so it's no surprise I'm lost. I guess I knew dueño, so I should have had the feminine form, but padrón was more familiar. Something in my memory was telling me sueña was "dream", but it turns out it is sueñO. So, my choice of a "D" at CANI_/_UENA turns out to be pure good luck! And man, I needed it for this one.

miriam b 10:53 PM  

Bill D - You're welcome. I don't know Spanish worth a darn, but I'm a foreign language nut who enjoys looking up things that pique my curiosity, like DUEÑA and duenna. However, I have studied French and German and speak/read very basic Russian.

Anonymous 11:22 AM  

Re:x's comments:

38A: Off which W did you get WINDOW?

43A: It takes only four straight cuts to get 8 pizza slices :-)

53A: PDQ Bach (1807-1742?) is the "ostensible" composer because it's Peter Schickele who actually writes these pieces. So no wonder you've never met PDQB...

[Really nice to be able to enter that immediately, even more so than ARCSINE because rarer letters have more information content (even though on a Saturday puzzle one cannot assume the Q will be followed with a U in the crossing word...). Still a PDHard puzzle.]

58A: Apparently it took the ancients some time to realize that the day star and evening star were the same heavenly body.

NDE

Rex Parker 11:34 AM  

@Noam,

Yes, four cuts to make eight. Thanks for taking me back to elementary school. I think I was thinking of CUTS as a noun ... which I realize is a stretch (cuts = slices?).

rp

Barbara Selvin 9:02 PM  

Whew! I just finished the March 1 puzzle today, March 12. And that's some Googling in the NW to get DORA. Tried to find the answer to "cousin of ASCII" and came up with ISOCODE. Had CESSNA -- should have gotten ODORS -- but I was stuck, stuck, stuck. Good thing I'd read about this blog a couple of weeks ago. I took a glance at PUBQUIZ and UNICODE and worked the rest from there. I'd still be tearing my hair out otherwise. All I can say is -- what a relief that everyone else thought this was a super-hard puzzle.

Anonymous 12:38 PM  

Whenever I read this blog I am amazed by how one puzzler's puzzle is another puzzler's gimme. Unless they are crosswordese, Rex's gimmes are nothing I've ever heard of, and his impossibles are "that's so easy, it's a stupid clue" to me. ie. MRE in this one.

I'm a provincial crossword solver - not in NYC - so this is old, old, stuff I suppose. Does anybody read these when we get the puzzles weeks later? BTW I'm on this site today following the contest info. What a hobby!

Rex Parker 12:47 PM  

Whoa, to be fair (to me), I know exactly what MREs are, and that answer was not "impossible" for me, by any means.

rp

Anonymous 1:42 PM  

CAlady said:
How did we get so many posts for tomorrow's puzzle on today's (March 1) blog. Worked hard to ignore them, but it shouldn't happen. Maybe just because Rex is momentarily distracted??
I wish him good luck, and a speedy return to straightening out the response dates. Would help to have the posting date as well as the time on the responses.

cody.riggs 7:36 PM  

Nobody posted enlightenment in the last 6 weeks re:PDQ BACH? This was the first answer I wrote in. He is an "ostensible" composer in that he is the fictitious creation of Dr. Peter Schickele, classical music's Wierd Al Yankovic. Schickele "discovers" new works by PDQ (pretty darn quick...get it?) Bach from time to time, and they are always wacky and outrageous - My favorites are the "Missa Hilarious" (in which a movement is sung in pig latin, and a children's choir prays fervently "Christe...Christe...Jesu H. Christe!"). Oh yes, and whose Credo is sung, Cre-do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti... And who can forget "The Seasonings," a spoof of Vivaldi's 4 Seasons in which various spices are personified by soloists ("I'm Cumin," declares one.) Perhaps PDQ Bach's best work is a spoof of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" in which Mozart's famous string serenade is played exactly, note for note, but with countless silly popular and folk tunes superimposed seamlessly on top of it. Check it out!

Anonymous 3:39 PM  

To: anonymous@12:38 PM

"One persons 'gimmie' is another persons WTF(?)"

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