Friday, 1/30/09

NYT 5:19 ... SUN 3:23 ... LAT 3:53 ... CS 2:17 ... CHE 2:15 ... WSJ 3:55 ... BEQ 3:26 ... MGWCC 5:46

Tough NYT by BEQ, I thought. Managed to muscle through everything but the northeast, which featured three ten-letter entries that I would never have gotten without crossings and guessing. Guessing at some downs gave me A-A-A at the end of the city name, and fortunately I recognized the city that would fit. Good thing I've seen AXOLOTL before somewhere - surely I have Orange to thank for blogging about it.

Had some trouble with the LAT - while the fill was easy enough, I couldn't grasp the correct way to pronounce the theme answers and had to do some guessing until I got it. Think I set a personal record on the Chronicle of Higher Ed. And holy moly you guys, the easy Wall Street Journal puzzle took me 3:55. Knew I was on a good pace but didn't think I would be under 4 minutes.

Late update: Gaffney's crossword isn't too hard, but the meta-puzzle certainly is. I haven't come up with one possible answer, let alone three, but I'm gonna try no-googling this one (until Monday, of course).

1 comment:

Joon said...

under 4 minutes! holy moly, indeed. i zoomed through it in 6:10 and thought, "whoa, that's my 21x21 record by more than a full minute." but i didn't think it was even possible to fill in that big a grid in four minutes.

i found the MGWCC crossword to be pretty tough. why do you say 5:46 "isn't too hard"? isn't that longer than any other puzzle you did this week? i'm also going to try no-googling until monday, but i'm not optimistic. i'm also 0/3, though i haven't given it a ton of thought.