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2007 Disney princess / FRI 6-17-11 / Disney animator Johnston / Singer with short-lived 1950s sitcom / Manga set in motion / High-tech scam artist
Friday, June 17, 2011
Constructor: Paula Gamache
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: OLLIE Johnston (19A: Disney animator Johnston who received the National Medal of Arts) —
Oliver Martin Johnston, Jr. (October 31, 1912 – April 14, 2008) was an American motion picture animator. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last surviving at the time of his death.[1][2][3][4] He was recognized by The Walt Disney Company with its Disney Legend Award in 1989. His work was recognized with the National Medal of Arts in 2005. // He was an animator at Walt Disney Studios from 1935 to 1978, and became a directing animator beginning with Pinocchio, released in 1940. He contributed to most Disney animated features, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia and Bambi. His last full work for Disney came with The Rescuers, in which he was caricatured as one of the film's characters, the cat Rufus. // Johnston co-authored, with Frank Thomas, the reference book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, which contained the 12 basic principles of animation. This book helped preserve the knowledge of the techniques that were developed at the studio. The partnership of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston is fondly presented in the documentary Frank and Ollie, produced by Thomas' son Theodore. (wikipedia)
Definitely a better-than-average puzzle from Paula, whose grids I often find pretentious in a Northeastern, pseudo-aristocratic kind of way—all wine types and Europeanisms and what not. You've still got the tell-tale slew of foreign language words (from all the major European languages: EINE, NEISSE (30A: German/Polish border river), ELA, KOLN (24A: ___ Bonn Airport), ETRE, OLE, MEINE (___ Liebe (Dear, in Dresden)), ORA (55D: 3,600 secondi), ETE ... I think that's all of them), but there's a lot of lively, zippy stuff to drown out the Euro-noise. Long stacks above and below are both lovely , as are CHOW LINE (5D: Waiters in a mess) and PHISHER (23D: High-tech scam artist) (a fine example of NEWNESS in the puzzle; 17A: Antiquity's antithesis).At 8:28, this was a pretty normal Friday for me, but early returns at the NYT site suggest this one proved harder than normal for many. A passel of proper nouns might have complicated things for people.
I was lucky to get HENNING straight off (6D: "World of Magic" Emmy nominee), which helped tremendously up top. I also got PINZA (25D: Singer with a short-lived 1950s sitcom) and NALDI (46D: Actress Nita who never made a talkie) very quickly based on prior crossword experience. The OLLIE (19A: Disney animator Johnston who received the National Medal of Arts) / GISELLE (1D: 2007 Disney princess) section took longest (I knew neither; I loved "Enchanted" and I Love Amy Adams, but I totally forgot her character's name was GISELLE). I'd have gotten IBANEZ instantly if the clue had been [Baseballer Raul]. As it was, I had to get nearly every letter from crosses (34A: Longtime guitar brand). Biggest hang-up came with RASTER, a word that looks hellishly wrong even now (39D: Scan lines on a monitor). It's a valid word, but you know it's not a very desirable word when it's made entirely of common, useful letters and still you (almost) never see it in puzzles.The stacks:
- 1A: Cause of a paradigm shift (GAME CHANGER)
- 12A: Prepare for pain (BITE THE BULLET)
- 14A: It takes a lot to get one upset (CAST IRON STOMACH)
- 54A: Tendency to overcompensate for a perceived shortcoming (NAPOLEON COMPLEX)
- 57A: Hunter with rough hair (BORDER TERRIER)
- 58A: Spoke up with one's head down? (SAID A PRAYER)
Bullets:
- 53A: Follower of many a mineralogist's name (-ITE) — I guess they name the ores after themselves. Cute. Just like VEGEMITE is named for Sir Andrew Vegem and SATELLITE for Henri Satell.
29D: Image on some joke T-shirts (TIE) — took me embarrassingly long to understand. I remember tuxedo t-shirts from the late 70s, and those did have TIEs on them. Maybe they make them in more of a suit-and-tie model now.- 52D: Pseudonym of a noted Freud patient (DORA) — he made her pay by the ORA.
- 48D: Prius alternative (CAMRY) — in that they are both Toyotas, I guess. My brain decided that five letters, starts w/ "C," [Prius alternative] = CIVIC.
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64 comments:
Definitely harder than the average Friday. Didn't have too much trouble with the proper names today other than PINZA and IBANEZ, and felt Naticked by those two, but correctly guessed Z because nothing else felt right at the end of IBANE_. Like Rex, a baseball clue instead of a guitar clue would have switched that from obscenely hard to a gimme. Oh well.
Anyway, RASTER? Never heard of that before. And I don't understand the clue on ITE -- is it just that mineralogists name things with -ITE at the end because they're minerals, or am I missing something more slick than that?
Other than those stumbling blocks, I enjoyed the grid. Liked the long acrosses, especially CAST IRON STOMACH. I like to think that I have one, but really what I have is a cast iron mouth and throat. I adore eating spicy and fiery foods ... my stomach does not enjoy digesting them,
Ran the alphabet to get RASTER?ITE oh yeah bauxite!put in CAMRY and ESSEX multiple times until they stayed put,I liked IN SIN all the long answeres not so much STETTING but no problem with much else-liked all the echoes TIT/PIE DORA/ORA/FEDORA CRASS/GLOSS OLLIE/OLE EINE?MEINE (EINIE MOE)and the clue for 12 down!good one Paula
FeDORA - Freud patient with CAST IRON STOMACH!
Medium-challenging for me too. Delightful grid with great stacks! Had CRUDE for CRASS and STEWARDS for CHOWLINE. Also had no idea Ezio PINZA had a sit-com but he was the only 50's singer that fit. That area took a while.
This would have been a whole lot easier if my first fill at 12A wasn't "grit ones teeth", and I felt soooo clever. Not EVEN freakin close! Live and learn, check a couple of crosses, missy. Figured out that I wasn't close when nothing would fit going down. Finally finished, but not without a major struggle and a few Googles.
Tough Friday for me.
Thought I had this one licked until " raster" which I've never heard of. Anyway guessed it from "ite" which I suspected in spite of it being an awful clue!!!
@chefwen
I would say "Grit one's teeth" is VERY close to BITETHEBULLET!
And the beginnings of the makings of a damn good Monday theme!
(Hey why not? The overlap of Monday/Friday crowd is eeny teeny...
echoing @syndy's meine eine eine moe!)
May I say this was sorta easy without tomatoes lobbed? I mean, maybe I lucked out with BITETHEBULLET right off the bat and every answer followed after that...
Immune system circulators? TCELLS, Gears up? READIES, Like some milk? SPILT...it was just boom boom boom all the way thru
(Literally only one writeover, sIPS to NIPS)
Oh wait, EINs to EINE as I was fooled by the non -S plural of CHOWLINE.
Never ever heard of RASTER nor OLLIE and associate Maya LIN with the Vietnam Memorial, not the Civil War.
Pretty grid, looked like one of those snowflakes you used to cut out at school by folding the paper a million times and snipping here and there.
Stacks of 11, 13, 15 was way cool.
A tiny pileup of L's what with BALLOT, OLLIE, GISELLE in the NW
and a sprinkle of mini-ones:
ILO, ELA, ELM...and double ones again with BULLET/TCELLS...
LLLLots of Ls.
Whereas on the other side lots of double SS: NEWNESS croSSing GLOSS,
CRASS croSSing ESSEX and NEISSE flowing along.
Normally I wouldn't like MEINE and EINE in the same puzzle, but there was something bouncy and mirror-y about this...like BIOLAB starting and ending with a B.
@Sydney,
I would add to your TIE/PIE,EINE/MINE, ORA/DORA/FEDORA two more sets: PINTA/PINZA and BITS/BITE...
(so @Rex, your Civic answer makes sense, given the DEED palindrome as well.)
And, ditto: PHISHER is NEWNESS personified.
Medium/hard for me -- I didn't mind the foreign words so much (ELA was the only one I hadn't heard of) but the proper names almost did me in, especially that OLLIE/GISELLE corner. BALANCER and ETAILER are unappealing. And shouldn't there have been something in the clue to 35D to signal that BIOLAB is an abbreviation? Or do people think of LAB as a word in its own right these days?
I also had CIVIC before CAMRY -- as clued, could have been any 5-letter car. FOCUS, MIATA, YARIS...
Loved this puzzle, both the fresh, fresh answers like PHISHER, NAOLEONCOMPLEX, CASTIRONSTOMACH, BITETHEBULLET, SAMEHERE and the clever clues, my favorites being 58A, Spoke up with one's head down? for SAIDAPRAYER and 15D, Words that'll get you carded? for HITME.
I also had EINs before EINE as did @addenda camry michaels and SwaTTING before STETTING. Last letter in was the "A" in RASTER, a total unknown to me.
Thanks for a fun, fun Friday, Paula!
Camry & Prius are both hybrids.
Did anyone notice the first 7 letters of GAMECHANGER are Gamache with the e and one of the a's switched in position. Is this a clever sort of constructor signature? Nice, I like it.
@anon: 9:05 Not all Camrys (Camries?) are hybrids; some Civics are hybrids....
Back at the end of the last century (1990's), before HiDef, HiRes, flat screens, you could clearly see the RASTER on your [CRT] screen - it was all those horizontal lines that made up the image.
P>G>
Wow, great Friday, great clues and answers. My last fill in was in the NE because I had GAMECHANGEs and tried HuLl and HoLd before HELM. SOREN was my first fill in.
Gotta go and take Mom to decorate Dad's grave for Father's Day. That's all, folks.
My blogger name is a mineral.
Gamechanger is very much in the language of CNBC, and is a common term in buzzword bingo, the unofficial sleep preventer in conferences nationwide.
Thought I was really going to dislike this puzzle, but substituted PHISHER for Napster and unlocked the whole shebang.
Very classy puzzle (in a good way). Nice, precise clues hiding super-common phrases like BITE THE BULLET and CAST-IRON STOMACH.
Loved the "psychotherapy" section at the bottom: NAPOLEON COMPLEX, DORA, SILENT P.
There is nothing funny about my TIE tee shirt. It is simply my way of saying that "I wanna be formal, but I'm here to party too".
@ Don Byas FeDORA is pretty damn funny!
Had to run the alphabet twice to convince myself that RASTER was the only possibility.
When that is the only complaint, and the fill is as much fun as this, that's a pretty darn good puzzle.
Went out to the Dry Tortugas two weeks ago, and was very thankful for my CASTIRONSTOMACH on the 2 1/2 hour boat trip home - very rough seas, and people getting sick all around me. The Fort Jefferson was well worth the visit, but the wind definitely reduced the visibility for snorkeling.
pastrati - they sing the high notes at the deli...
Started off in the middle at PINTA, LIN, ABSENT and the last three letters of 28 across ING, (without a clue at that point as to what made up the rest of the word).
From there it was expanding the waistline with tidbits galore and finally, getting the comestible goodies disguised as 15's, 13's and 11's in the puzzle as the main course. A feast for the mind!
Biggest stumbling block came at RAS-ER crossing I-E which necessitated a guess that it was the obvious
ITE, nothing trickier.
Favorite clue was a new wrinkle on an old trick, leading to the SILENTP answer.
Thanks, Paula for another treat!
Loved this one.
The long answers were so much fun.
Border terriers do a lot of rat hunting but are not "hunting" dogs like a spaniel or setter so that was a clever misdirection.
I could not remember that manga refers to cartoons so that crossing a Polish river left me with a DNF by one square but I still enjoyed the ride.
I often seem to be on Paula's wavelength and certainly not because I'm "Northeastern pseudo-aristocratic," thank-you-very-much. This was a lovely, fun Friday for me with Paula's always clever clueing and topical fill: manga, ANIME; high-tech PHISHER; STETTING, the verb; and the beautiful APROPOS. Then the grid is presented with the little photograph corner mounts like an old scrapbook.
Way to be, Paula!
One write-over at 56 D, POT before PIE.
@David L - Late week puzzles don't always signal abbr. Curiously, today 49 A does while 44 A doesn't.
such a toughie for me, and not in a delightful way. i felt like i was always saying "i guess it could be this" but i just wasnt certain about much - kept paddling out to the wave, but just couldnt hang a good ten. Did get a nice ride on BITETHEBULLET.
and I hated ITE. There are tons and tons of minerals that end with ITE, a fraction of which are named after mineralogists. For the most part these are neither minerals or mineralogists you would ever have heard of. names of more common ITE minerals (quartzite, halite, chlorite, etc) are far far more likely to relate to (1) region where it was discovered or (2) a unique physical property. though @syndy's example of bauxite is actually an ore, not a mineral, its found in the Baux region of France, e.g.
And I didn't like GAMECHANGER either. But thats probably because I've read Thomas Kuhn and was looking for something headier. Clearly just wasn't my day.
Most ores are minerals but not all minerals are ores, the difference being that ores have commercial value. Learned that in Geology class.
Nice write-up of a nice puz, @31.
Flamed out a bit at A?IME/?EISSE. But guessed it OK.
another friday where i almost finished. now i have to look up stetting. i found the puzzle challenging and fun and was so close.
This newbie had to look up quite a few clues! Wondering how long it will take to get proficient with Friday puzzles...Your postings are always helpful, Rex. Love ya.
And I love ya. :)
I once challenged readers to invent a drink called a SONATINI (based on a wrong answer I had in a puzzle). I know think maybe there should be a drink called a RASTER. Someone get on that. Or I will.
I still have those sonatini recipes around here somewhere. Most were ... not serious.
rp
@Rex
I don't drink, but I wouldn't order a RASTER. It sounds like it would have a hair in the bottom of it!
That said, it definitely calls for some Jamaican Rum!
@Rob C 9:11AM
That is FABULOUS, the whole
GAMaCHe GAMeCHa NGER observation!!!!
Hmmm Jamaican rum infused with THC perhaps.I know people who make such things....
A little lime in the coconut mix it all up ?
Still devastated that I had to erase BRACE ONESSELF from 12A. Man, that felt good inserting into an empty grid...
Had STEELYOURSELF for 12a, and like @chefwen, was so proud of myself - not!
@acme - "I don't drink, but I wouldn't order a RASTER. It sounds like it would have a hair in the bottom of it!" - made me laugh out loud.
Just couldn't give up GIBSON for 34A.
Challenging puzzle.
@CK - I see we were typing at the same time - BRACE/STEEL - same thinking!
@ksquare - ores are rocks made from minerals and mineral assemblages. minerals are defined by their unique chemical composition and crystal structure. as you say, they're not the same thing. bauxite, e.g. contains iron oxides, clay minerals and a couple of different alumnimum hydroxide (i think) minerals. i learned that when i was getting a masters in geology. :-) maybe i'm too close to the subject and we're even saying the same thing? whatever. i'm gun-shy from yesterday's low expectation brouhaha so have this obsessive need to be clearly understood!!
@Hazel, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is on my list of top ten books which changed my paradigm. So yes, GAMECHANGER was a disappointment.
@Quilter1, I too was surprised to find three things on a ship that fit the H?L? pattern.
I struggled all the way through this, but will go back and review and try to learn some things. I do see that it is all pretty fair and in the language, except RASTER. I went searching on line for some kind of 3 letter mineralogist certification: International or Institute; not there. I sure get OLLIE faster when he is clued as a friend of Kukla and Fran.
Hmm, is it late enough in the day to go whip up a RASTER? Maybe a Sonatini instead.
A lot to like here, especially with the cornucopia of foreign words, cultural references, and neologisms -- none of which quite descend into snobbishness.
The answer KOLN (24A) raises a prickly question about the handling of diacritics in puzzles. Are they always to be ignored? I realize that for languages that make use of the tilde, acute, and brave, there's little choice. But we do have a workaround in English for the German umlaut, and it's the letter "e" after the vowel. So shouldn't the proper answer be KOELN, or do we just cheat these spellings consistently? One day, I'd like to see an enterprising constructor require the inclusion of a diacritic (maybe it's already been done), making it work for both the across and down word.
I'm struck by how many commentators never heard the word RASTER, even if they didn't know its meaning. Maybe it takes a serious user of Photoshop and video technology to know that the word has even spawned a verb variant -- RASTERIZE -- that has become just as familiar.
HTG in the N. The S I did in good time. No problem with RASTER, a perfectly good word clued well.
The errors PEI @ 21A, ARIELLE @ 2D, and PROFS @ 14D made the entire N a WTF until I googled for some of it. HULL @ 27A was just correct enough to give me TITLE @ 15D. TITLE of a book, "carded" in the library card catalog. OK, maybe they don't have card catalogs anymore, but still.....
Anyway, it was a solid puzzle and an enjoyable solve. Last square was fixing the S of EINS (32A), chosen because 5D looked like a plural. ___WLINS was, however, going nowhere.
Anyway, my thanks to Ms. Gamache.
Forgot to mention that I only knew RASTER as a pattern of hairs on white grubs (remembered that from Turf class.)
Midday report of relative difficulty (see my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation of my method):
All solvers (median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Fri 26:39, 25:51, 1.03, 58%, Medium
Top 100 solvers
Fri 13:46, 12:43, 1.08, 67%, Medium-Challenging
A sonatini is a highbrow drink, for sure. A raster would be blue collar, or so it seems to me. Has there ever been a drink that mixed beer with hard liquor?
@ lewis - a boilermaker.
Definitely a difficult Friday for me. Only got a few short words before I had to google. But even with all the googling I could not get any of the long answers. Looking at the solution I can see that they were "gettable". Ah well next time.
@retired chemist
Thank you! I guess you can tell I'm not much of a drinker; I've heard of a boilermaker but don't know what's in it. But I think a raster might pattern itself in some way after a boilermaker...
I also wanted Fender for IBANEZ until Mario Pinza proved me wrong. I cannot imagine him in a sitcom.
Great outrage here. Mom and I got to the cemetery and the brass flower vase holders had been stolen off the face of the mausoleum. To do this the marble face of the slot had to be removed so Dad's grave had been opened! Incredibly the cemetery manager seemed unconcerned, and not a bit curious. We could not leave our flowers. I am looking for someone to yell at and get to the bottom of this. Grr.
I was having a lousy day and Rex you made me laugh! I would love to have dinner with Sir Vegem and Sir Satell and hear about their minerals.
DORA paying by the ORA (beyond being funny) exemplified what I felt was an echo-ey feeling to the puzzle: PINTA/ PINZA, EINE/MEINE, ELM/HELM, ORA/DORA/FEDORA.
I knew RASTER for scientific reasons (yeah, once in a while it does help!).
In general, the stacks are very cool and it really all depends on whether the clue triggers the answer right away or not. PHISHER is great! Very lovely puzzle!
@quilter1— It's Ezio Pinza, the great Met basso who created the part of Émile de Becque in South Pacific and had an abortive movie and TV career after he left the opera. You've mixed him up with Mario Lanza, I think. Hard to imagine Mario in a sitcom, either, though he did lighter roles in his few films.
I loved this puzzle, got it all without help, but it took a little while and a break, so medium-challenging sounds right to me.
For some reason I immediately filled in "ach du" for 3D! Easy to fix. With the guitars, I was thinking Gibson, Fender and Parker, not Ibanez at all. I envisioned all sorts of hirsute creatures for the hairy hunter.
Ite was easy, I work with gems, and it was the first suffix that came to mind.
@nanpilla: LOL at your interpretation of "pastrati".
A raster should definitely be rum based, maybe with a little mango puree. Really, really strong.
I don't know how you make one but I'm pretty sure a RASTER ends up in disaster!
Like two parts bourbon, one part jet fuel and BOOM!
They made their first guitar:
Gibson circa 1890
Ibanez circa 1929
Fender circa 1946
Makes them all 6 letter "longtimers" tho.
Who are the idiots that google answers?
Brian Williams used "game changer" in his first sentence this evening.
I thought it was pretty hard relative to recent Fridays. All I could put in the grid before googling some things was Etailer/ETAs and Bits/Ete. I did really enjoy the long across answers.
Wow: STETTING
Whole family used to sit around the TV in the fifties and watch Ezio Pinza sing "Some Enchanted Evening." Ah, those were the days!
@mac
maybe he did the puzzle!
Still stunned at the GAMaCHe/GAMeCHa
NGER coincidence!!!
@Foodie
yes, ELM/HELM, seriously, what was up with all the rhymes etc. What was happenstance, what was planned?
@JenCT
Thanks...odd, tho, did not know the hairs on grub connection when I made that little joke!
catcha: Hitushes - naughty spankings for @jesser!
The only Ibanez I know is Raul. Otherwise, good, not-too-hard-for-a-Friday puzzle.
must be a pseudo-aristocratic northeasterner living in Iowa...
I liked the puzzle except that I absolutely could NOT get a foothold without a google or two. Started with the very non-PC STEWARDS for 5D and then kept trying to fit TEETH in 12A somehow.
I too wondered about the diacritical marks when I finally entered KOLN. I think I remember seeing them in a NYT puzzle somewhere. The real problem I have with them is in the LAT puzzles that use them in the clues, my local paper can't handle them and often the clue is unreadable.
bleranoa: bleary ennui after a boring puzzle?
This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.
All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)
Mon 7:23, 6:52, 1.07, 78%, Medium-Challenging
Tue 8:32, 8:55, 0.96, 45%, Medium
Wed 12:20, 11:48, 1.05, 65%, Medium-Challenging
Thu 19:57, 19:07, 1.04, 63%, Medium-Challenging
Fri 26:03, 25:51, 1.01, 54%, Medium
Top 100 solvers
Mon 4:08, 3:40, 1.13, 90%, Challenging
Tue 4:26, 4:35, 0.97, 46%, Medium
Wed 6:18, 5:49, 1.08, 75%, Medium-Challenging
Thu 10:24, 9:14, 1.13, 77%, Medium-Challenging
Fri 13:15, 12:42, 1.04, 64%, Medium-Challenging
barf. the long entries were fresh and fun. unfortunately the downs were obscure and stupid. i was busy today so i had to keep coming back between productive things to do. that might have sunk me, but i was sunk and not happy. the pinza/ibanez cross was two WTFs meeting in Natick for a cup of "who the hell cares". barf.
Well, color me pleased! I like it all, and figured with all those stacks this must rank among the fewest-black-squares-in-a-daily lists... although 33 doesn't sound all that low, really...
STETTING was a tad ugly, but gettable. I liked it!
oristro = ore maestro, ace mineralogist!
STET was the first thing I thought of, but I was so opposed to TING on the end that it only worked itself out from the crosses.
One seriously petty nit to pick: If you actually put an X on your ballot, don't expect it to be counted.
Initial scan of clues left me with PINTA and zero else. Grid stayed that way for quite a while, but an S here, an ED or ING there and the next thing you know I've finished a Friday with just one error (natick at square 46).
@ davko 3:20 PM
But we do have a workaround in English for the German umlaut, and it's the letter "e" after the vowel. So shouldn't the proper answer be KOELN...
English spelling is actually Cologne, isn't it? Although their local brew is sometimes spelled Koelsch.
I have an IRON STOMACH, by the way, but I can't say for sure whether its CAST IRON because I've never heard that phrase with the word CAST up front.
@anonymous 6:21: It is well you should remain anonymous after such a remark. I, sir (or madam) do it because it's an opportunity to--hello--LEARN something! Because of course I don't merely mine out my answer and go; I read more, sometimes the whole article. Thus puzzling is a springboard to a good, in-depth education. Like reading Michener. Oh well, maybe you have a NAPOLEONCOMPLEX.
Surprised no one mentioned the connection between 12a and 14a: surely if you BITETHEBULLET and swallow, you'd wind up with a CASTIRONSTOMACH. Also surprised to learn that STET, which I thought was a Latin word used only in that form as an editorial mark, is actually a verb. Gotta question that one.
Also noticed one more wrinkle not so far mentioned: the mirrored partials at 15d/34d read "HIT ME IN SIN." And just who in blazes is this "DORA," she's so "noted?" Nev-vah heard of her. Never mind; I'll Google it. Maybe I'll learn something.
Another nice puzzle from Paula who I happen to like (mostly). Thankfully, as one in aviation, knew Koln-Bonn. Had a friend who played an Ibanez (otherwise just Gibson or Fender is all I know). But ANYTHING would have been better then that crazy (bleeping) thing from yesterday. I finished it fine even though I had zero clue what kind of crytoquotic nightmare he was looking for.
I started this puzzle by myself after work on Friday (July 22 in syndiland) and made scant progress before retiring for the night. Puzzle-novice friend came to visit Saturday evening and we picked up where I had left off and had a terrific time solving it together. When we finally finished we pronounced it the most fun we had ever had with our clothes on - a wonderful puzzle!
@Deb@Roomscapes - X is a perfectly acceptable mark on ballots where I vote; so is a check mark.
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