tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post6142673606650815175..comments2024-03-29T11:24:03.304-04:00Comments on Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Popular newspaper puzzle / THU 7-26-18 / "It wasn't me" / Cirque du Soleil performers / Mystery novelist Cross / Singers Nina and Lisa / R&B singer KhanRex Parkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16145707733877505087noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-36138534609063523572021-01-25T10:43:32.925-05:002021-01-25T10:43:32.925-05:00k for kindergarten in 2 cluesk for kindergarten in 2 cluesAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-66039720441299553842018-08-30T19:42:12.715-04:002018-08-30T19:42:12.715-04:00IDUNNO about "The Spy Who SNOGged Me", b...IDUNNO about "The Spy Who SNOGged Me", but "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was changed to "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles" in the UK. <br /><br />A real fun puzzle, this one. I liked the hashtag gimmick well enough, but the verb/adjective tricksyness of 40A was the one that got me to groan out loud when I finally saw it.<br />straylinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13536180563789923012noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-34936769644815744842018-08-30T18:21:21.171-04:002018-08-30T18:21:21.171-04:00Enjoyed this one, even if I did stumble over that ...Enjoyed this one, even if I did stumble over that game with stones-our ser dating from 40 or so years ago, when my kids were players, is labeled " "Kalah" a word my processor is fighting all the way. Maybe a different version? I hope our firefighter is back on his feet and loaded for bear by now, I know my replacement has given me years of painless use! DMGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-7328527271403536282018-08-30T17:13:01.053-04:002018-08-30T17:13:01.053-04:00IDUNNO, but The Spy who Snogged Me sounds RACIER t...IDUNNO, but The Spy who Snogged Me sounds RACIER than The Spy Who Shagged Me.<br /><br />I also didn't know SHIH about # meaning Space. <br /><br />Also learned something new about OCTOTHORPodes <br />Wooody2004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-11572550368974227952018-08-30T15:56:57.340-04:002018-08-30T15:56:57.340-04:00PS - I did fly the deLorean to Futureland to reque...PS - I did fly the deLorean to Futureland to request an update on the Syndie Button - to no avail as of yet...<br /><br />Lday DiDiana,LIWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-91077829250405121332018-08-30T15:52:36.051-04:002018-08-30T15:52:36.051-04:00I might have said "PIN number" once, but...I might have said "PIN number" once, but I think I got away with it. However people actually do say that as often as simply "PIN".<br /><br />@Spacey - #, the final frontier. Funny.<br /><br />Why isn't the OCTOTHORPE on the "8" key? This is something to be concerned about.<br /><br />Having edited several CHEMistry textbooks, I am familiar with # meaning "space".<br /><br />Despite the alphabet run, I liked this puzzle.<br />@Burma - glad you're still poetizing.rainforestnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-59492390731995773812018-08-30T15:52:07.895-04:002018-08-30T15:52:07.895-04:00For some reason I started off in the SE corner and...For some reason I started off in the SE corner and solved the gimmick right off the bat. Weird, because I always start in the NE corner. Anyways, after that it was pretty much smooth sailing. Almost as easy as JUMBLE, until I hit the SW corner. I got stuck there for a while until I solved REFARM the rest fell into place. Loved the gimmick. Nicely done Nate Cardin. Please <b>pound</b> out some more like this one.thefogmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01870509029973778266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-88190867137299263652018-08-30T15:32:06.034-04:002018-08-30T15:32:06.034-04:00Whilst I'm not in the "Rebi Yum" clu...Whilst I'm not in the "Rebi Yum" club, I managed to figure this out at the DOG/CAKE cross. I, too, don't get the "space" and OCTO/THORPE areas, but completed anyway. all in all, if one nust rebi, this was a good one.<br /><br />Diana, LIWDiana,LIWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-72849267286919921142018-08-30T13:45:42.819-04:002018-08-30T13:45:42.819-04:00OCTO and THORPE were gimmes but made no sense to m... OCTO and THORPE were gimmes but made no sense to me as part of a revealer, so I "finished" the puzzle without using the HASHTAG # sign, though realizing what words were needed in the key squares.<br /><br />At first inferred that space STATION and sharpSHOOTERS meant that the missing words had to begin with an S. And sCRUNCHER and PINs seemed to work as non-rebuses. DOG shelter seemed to work, too, but with shelterCAKE? Hardly. POUND had to be it. My dim bulb blinked with the PIN and CRUNCHER numbers as well.<br /><br />No OCTOTHORPEs in sight. <br /><br />leftcoastTAMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-25640291982816188152018-08-30T11:22:15.271-04:002018-08-30T11:22:15.271-04:00WAKE UP!! We're still on SUNDAY!! DO SOMETHING...WAKE UP!! We're still on SUNDAY!! DO SOMETHING!!!!!<br /><br />#, the final frontier. Huh? Never, ever saw or heard of the symbol used for space. A total outlier. I used to live near Jim THORPE, PA, whose original name was Mauch Chunk. JT was born there, so they say. Reading about possible origins of the OCTOTHORP[E] name was amusing. I kind of like the village surrounded by eight fields; please don't REFARM them. Ugh. Would you have to go to REFARM school to learn how?<br /><br />More unfortunate fill: RRN right next to the most abominable of all, the dreaded alphabet string. CMON now, there's got to be a way to fix that. The rest of the fill isn't that bad, but yikes! there.<br /><br />Six letters, popular newspaper puzzle: sudoku, of course! I was stopped just in time from writing it in when I saw that 11-down had to be BNAI. I don't like fill that separates two parts of a name and uses only one, but so far it was passable. And, the game had to be JUMBLE because of it. My lone single-letter overwrite was at #69. Wrong gender for the Spanish, I had OTRo. OMULET sounds like breakfast. Think I'll make one.<br /><br />DOD, right next to honorable-mention SIMONES, is the amazing CHAKA Khan. DOODAH! Different, well-executed theme; spotty fill. Par. Would have been a clear birdie without 39/45 down.spacecraftnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-76937887649994397682018-08-30T10:06:30.771-04:002018-08-30T10:06:30.771-04:00LIKE RACIER LIKE OMEN
IDUNNO if it’s LIKE DENIAL,...LIKE RACIER LIKE OMEN<br /><br />IDUNNO if it’s LIKE DENIAL, MAAM,<br />but AMANDA’s LIKE an AMORAL trash bag.<br />IDO know I don’t LIKE give ADAMN<br />for a TOKEN SNOG after her LIKE HASH TAG.<br /><br />--- THORPE ETON MUIR, III<br />Burma Shavenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-7047730356551797502018-08-30T09:19:01.208-04:002018-08-30T09:19:01.208-04:00So even with all of the PIN *number* discussion no...So even with all of the PIN *number* discussion nobody said that the clue should have read “ATM *machine* necessity”. Consistency counts. Found the gimmick @ DOG#CAKE. Like many others I had no idea that # = space.<br /><br />Classic Bart Simpson prank call to Moe, looking for AMANDA Huggenkiss.<br /><br />The SIMONES. Yeah babies.<br /><br />Decent puz, though I am probably one of the few to never have used a HASH TAG.<br />rondonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-76317904604334888342018-07-27T01:05:45.077-04:002018-07-27T01:05:45.077-04:00@puzzlehoarder ... Best wishes with your procedure...@puzzlehoarder ... Best wishes with your procedure and the recovery. I got a few chills when you mentioned discarding your trove of hoarded puzzles at the firehouse. Thank you for your service to your community.sanfranman59https://www.blogger.com/profile/15118732156312301425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-63467398634150142512018-07-27T01:01:13.900-04:002018-07-27T01:01:13.900-04:00This week's relative difficulty ratings. See m...This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 1/2/2018 post for an explanation of my method. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio & percentage, the higher my solve time was relative to my norm for that day of the week. Your results may vary.<br /><br />(Day, Solve time, 26-wk Median, Ratio, %, Rating)<br /><br />Mon 3:40 4:30 0.82 4.8% Very Easy<br />Tue 7:28 5:14 1.43 95.2% Very Challenging<br />Wed 7:29 6:46 1.10 66.3% Medium-Challenging<br />Thu 9:41 9:41 1.00 51.2% Medium (ish)<br /><br />Late to the game today, so no one will probably ever read this ... it's been a rough week ... if you're looking for somewhere to send a few prayers, I'd sure appreciate them ... onto the show ...<br /><br />I lost about 1:30 fumbling around (see below), so Easy-Medium, really. Ignoring my fumbling, the solving stats in Ralph Bunker's fine online app tell me that I was 2:11 in the NW 1/3 (Easy pace), 2:20 in the middle/NE 1/3 (Easy) and 3:42 for the southern 1/3 (Medium-Challenging).<br /><br />Despite totally botching the end, I really enjoyed this solve. I just couldn't close. I got OCTOTHORPEd (54A, 62A). I picked up the first # without any trouble, but simply typed 'number' as a rebus into the app since I doubted it would accept an OCTOTHORPE (not that I knew what that was at the time). I didn't notice until I got to HASH TAG (70A, 71A) that all of the symbols were OCTOTHORPEs.<br /><br />At one point, I went back and changed the rebus words to #s and then a few answers later, reconsidered again, losing almost a minute of solve time in the process. Then came the actual OCTOTHORPE. I threw eCTO in there because, in spite of living in this fair city for 22 years, I'm embarrassingly inadequate in Spanish and eTRA (54D) seemed bueno to me, even though I'm perfectly aware that OTRA is 'other' (doh!).<br /><br />I thought I might want to work at AMGEN (30D) back when I worked in biopharma.<br /><br />Learning opportunities: Lisa SIMONE (46D) and MANCALA (5D)<br /><br />Favorite moments: recalling MAD LIBS (10D) and the heroic John MUIR (52A).<br /><br />This is an excellent debut. More please?sanfranman59https://www.blogger.com/profile/15118732156312301425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-58768159048426561962018-07-26T22:44:19.890-04:002018-07-26T22:44:19.890-04:00Redundancies like PIN number and ATM machines are ...Redundancies like PIN number and ATM machines are pleonasms. They are common, e.g. tuna fish.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-16186688110582454942018-07-26T22:08:34.666-04:002018-07-26T22:08:34.666-04:00My grandsons recently told us they needed "ha...My grandsons recently told us they needed "hashtag 2" pencils for school and asked what those were.Louhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11476539322461020940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-45062716543724278402018-07-26T21:09:52.541-04:002018-07-26T21:09:52.541-04:00#Awful
PIN Number is unforgivable. There were way...#Awful<br /><br />PIN Number is unforgivable. There were way too many acronyms, non-words, and strings of letters. This whole puzzle just felt lazy to me, like a clever idea that needed to be developed. Seeing this makes me understand why Rex laments the lack of editing that plagues the NYT Puzzle these days. <br />Jesse Witthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17303843866820554058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-35928609533292181522018-07-26T18:39:34.500-04:002018-07-26T18:39:34.500-04:00@Puzzlehparder, good luck tomorrow! I hope your k...@Puzzlehparder, good luck tomorrow! I hope your knee surgeon is as great as mine was. <br /><br />@Gill I, I briefly thought the same thing about Joe’s URN. Our family doesn’t bother with the URN on the mantel piece; it’s a box in the garage till they are scattered to the winds. Apparently my brother (a now retired firefighter) didn’t give us all of our parents ashes to scatter on the hill behind our childhood home. He kept some of their ashes and scattered them in Ireland in a trip with some of his firefighter buddies. I think they were transported in a plastic bag in his carryon bag. <br /><br />@Mary McCarty, your comment did make it into the blog. ROFL, anytime anyone writes “don’t check” I confess that curiosity always gets the better of me. Aketihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07059835429995060000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-53881879189342964412018-07-26T17:35:00.191-04:002018-07-26T17:35:00.191-04:00@Nancy, I can’t help you with your email issue but...@Nancy, I can’t help you with your email issue but I can commiserate. I got an email from Flickr saying they merged with Yahoo or done entity and asked me to save any files I had on their website or they would be deletedWell I don’t recall ever using Flickr so I was curious how I had files on it, if I did. When I clicked on the link they asked me to enter my yahoo pw. Well I don’t have yahoo either. But then I began to think that since they also own AOL then maybe I do. I still can’t figure it out. Your best bet is to open a new gmail (how did you get signed in to this blog —blue name— without one?) QuasiMojonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-59780681120849082152018-07-26T17:11:42.639-04:002018-07-26T17:11:42.639-04:00@Nancy
Today, most people use Gmail. You might w...@Nancy<br /><br />Today, most people use Gmail. You might want to give it a try. I believe there's a way to import your Yahoo address book, so you can send out a mass email (make sure to use the <b>bcc</b> option) to notify everyone of your new email.JC66https://www.blogger.com/profile/05324615675333287919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-89394067089586544642018-07-26T17:06:44.616-04:002018-07-26T17:06:44.616-04:00@Nancy
My son used to work at Yahoo, so I just se...@Nancy<br /><br />My son used to work at Yahoo, so I just sent him an email asking if he could help.<br /><br />It was many years ago, so he may not be able to, but I thought it would be worth the try.JC66https://www.blogger.com/profile/05324615675333287919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-59556530974744053742018-07-26T16:46:28.338-04:002018-07-26T16:46:28.338-04:00None of you would happen to have a phone # to call...None of you would happen to have a phone # to call Yahoo's email department and speak to a real human being, would you? They keep locking me out of my email. And they tell me I should <i>use my cell phone</i> to get back into my email!!!<br /><br />They know my cell phone #. How can they possibly??? How can they even know I have a cell phone??? It's a number which almost no one in the entire world knows, which is used only for the most dire emergencies or when I am meeting up with someone that day, a phone which I never have with me at any other time, which I <i>still</i> haven't learned to use even though it's a "dumb" flip phone and is supposed to be easy, and which sits in my drawer for days and occasionally weeks at a time. Did my carrier, Sprint, provide the number to Yahoo. This is bizarre. This is creepy.<br /><br />There's a Yahoo box you can click on that says: "I do not have access to this phone". I always click on that box, even though I'm lying through my teeth. Then I have to answer the email security questions. So I answer them. Then they say everything's good. After which I sometimes get back into my email, but just as often I can't. Even when I can, they'll lock me out again the next time and make me go through the entire process again. Help!!! Does anyone have a clue what is going on??? Nancyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16737377749030219974noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-11841743772419245802018-07-26T16:32:19.522-04:002018-07-26T16:32:19.522-04:00For anyone interested. The podcast “99% invisible”...For anyone interested. The podcast “99% invisible” had a podcast titled “Octothorpe” a few years ago. It was about the history of the symbols. Pretty interested program for anyone interested. Were it not for that I would have never heard that phrase. I’m not the Will above, but also did it in about half my normal Thursday Willhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10102464023199731500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-1156624170948219692018-07-26T16:22:08.694-04:002018-07-26T16:22:08.694-04:00It would have been neat if they had clued it as &q...It would have been neat if they had clued it as "ATM machine need" insteadAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35115061.post-70074140883134932312018-07-26T14:53:09.858-04:002018-07-26T14:53:09.858-04:00About half my typical Thursday time. Enjoyable puz...About half my typical Thursday time. Enjoyable puzzle.willnoreply@blogger.com