Saturday, 7/10/10

NYT 4:55 ... LAT 2:41 ... CS 1:39 ... ND 4:26 ... Labyrinth (p) 6:45

Nice Stumper, Joon! I was afraid after seeing the byline that there would be scary academic stuff, but it was nice and smooth. Hope you'll share some clue-editing details over at the Fiend. And another great LAT freestyle, Doug -- above-average time means fresh fill and clues!

Heh... one of the Newsday clues made the NYT's 46A a gimme. One reason my NYT times are so speedy is that I almost always solve it last.

4 comments:

Doug P said...

Thanks, Dan! I enjoyed joon's Stumper too. Even though I'd seen the grid and many of the clues a few months ago, it was still pretty stumpy.

Sara said...

One reason might be that you solve the NY Times last. Another might be that you're an unfuckingbelievable solver. A combination of those two, I guess.

Joon said...

thanks dan! TERENCE, NABOKOV and BACON'S rebellion weren't academic enough? (and ENSOR, although i guess he's more crosswordy than academic at this point.) i actually tried to work RAGNAROK into this one, but stan wasn't familiar with it, and a google search turned up mostly final fantasy-related hits, so he thought it was some sort of video game thing. the only other tough answer i thought was SEIDEL, which i had clued as {Poker star Erik}. maybe the presence of ONE PAIR elsewhere was part of why it got changed.

overall, my impression of the cluing was that stan actually eased up on my clues overall. {Wasn't broken} for HELD SERVE was my favorite; ah well. i guess his CONVINCE clue was tougher than mine, which was {Make believe} (still tough i think). and NABOKOV was clued as {"The Original of Laura" author}; the lepidopterist clue would have been easy for me but i don't know how other people fared on it.

you're welcome for SWARDS (and maybe O'NEIL, although i figure that one was easy anyway).

Dan said...

Sara: Well, being "warmed up" does help. :)

Joon: I wouldn't have known either SEIDEL, or who/what RAGNAROK is! I guess those authors weren't scary because I knew them. Though I did start to enter CHEKHOV when I was looking at ----KOV.