The center entry could have been BIN, BOX, STY -- or PEN if you don't read the clue correctly -- so, how does one solve a pangram in under 2.5 minutes? It would take me that long just to look over all the surrounding fill and determine which 3 letters are missing. Impressive.
Well, it took just over two minutes for the rest of the puzzle because the clues were so easy! The first letter I checked for the center was "B", which worked out, then "O" was clearly the missing vowel, and "X" became obvious. Very clever gimmick!
As for the easy fill: I was afraid that making a puzzle without the letter "o" (outside the box) would lead to strained fill, so I went with the fewest and most familiar propers possible to prevent Natick squares. Looks like I overcompensated!
Even so, I sure thought the puzzle might run on a Wednesday or a Thursday.
Joe, when I first opened the puzzle I thought something like "Oh, there's a three-letter box in the center... and box is three letters... ". After I filled in the rest of the grid and read the clue for the center, I figured I'd just try BOX before looking for missing letters.
Cool puzzle. But, yeah, definately a Wednesday-ishy one.
Opposite experience. I finished the puzzle in around 5:10ish but took over a minute to get BOX, I kept confusing myself by thinking letters weren't present which actually were. Btw, This puzzle obviously could still have been tough with different clues.
True. Puzzle could have taken on more difficult clues ... Maybe Will initially targeted an earlier day of the week and changed his mind ... with no time to adjust the clue difficulty. That's just my guess.
Disagree - I think that Will could adjust a set of clues in ten minutes flat if he were under time pressure. And if he were changing the day-of-week (which I doubt ever happens), why not just push it back a week?
No, it had to be Friday because it's essentially themeless. (Only exceptions I can think of - where the whole grid is the theme - are the "all names" and "mirror image" Tuesday puzzles, but those couldn't be hard enough to be weekend.) Will may have eased up the cluing so that people didn't get scared away by the unusual grid, and like you said it's not a "weekend" fill.
The average solver would be somewhat unhappy if he/she couldn't figure out the word in the box. (That's the big prize). So... the whole rest of the puzzle had to be easy enough to provide material for the letter hunt.
And like Dan said: not enough theme content to run earlier in the week.
9 comments:
The center entry could have been BIN, BOX, STY -- or PEN if you don't read the clue correctly -- so, how does one solve a pangram in under 2.5 minutes? It would take me that long just to look over all the surrounding fill and determine which 3 letters are missing. Impressive.
Well, it took just over two minutes for the rest of the puzzle because the clues were so easy! The first letter I checked for the center was "B", which worked out, then "O" was clearly the missing vowel, and "X" became obvious. Very clever gimmick!
yeah, pretty much what dan said. i doubt it took more than 10 seconds for me to get BOX. (might have cost me my first under-3 friday solve, though.)
Makes a lot of sense the way you explained it.
As for the easy fill: I was afraid that making a puzzle without the letter "o" (outside the box) would lead to strained fill, so I went with the fewest and most familiar propers possible to prevent Natick squares. Looks like I overcompensated!
Even so, I sure thought the puzzle might run on a Wednesday or a Thursday.
Joe, when I first opened the puzzle I thought something like "Oh, there's a three-letter box in the center... and box is three letters... ". After I filled in the rest of the grid and read the clue for the center, I figured I'd just try BOX before looking for missing letters.
Cool puzzle. But, yeah, definately a Wednesday-ishy one.
Opposite experience. I finished the puzzle in around 5:10ish but took over a minute to get BOX, I kept confusing myself by thinking letters weren't present which actually were. Btw, This puzzle obviously could still have been tough with different clues.
True. Puzzle could have taken on more difficult clues ... Maybe Will initially targeted an earlier day of the week and changed his mind ... with no time to adjust the clue difficulty. That's just my guess.
Disagree - I think that Will could adjust a set of clues in ten minutes flat if he were under time pressure. And if he were changing the day-of-week (which I doubt ever happens), why not just push it back a week?
No, it had to be Friday because it's essentially themeless. (Only exceptions I can think of - where the whole grid is the theme - are the "all names" and "mirror image" Tuesday puzzles, but those couldn't be hard enough to be weekend.) Will may have eased up the cluing so that people didn't get scared away by the unusual grid, and like you said it's not a "weekend" fill.
Aha! It's starting to make sense now...
The average solver would be somewhat unhappy if he/she couldn't figure out the word in the box. (That's the big prize). So... the whole rest of the puzzle had to be easy enough to provide material for the letter hunt.
And like Dan said: not enough theme content to run earlier in the week.
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