Saturday, 3/14/09

NYT 8:04 ... LAT 2:48 ... CS 1:49 ... ND 7:15

I wanted to print the puzzles today, but my computer has stopped recognizing the USB connection to the printer. And I can't recreate the unplugging and replugging sequence that worked a couple days ago. Annoyed!

Barry Silk's NYT puzzle was slow to get going, but not abnormally difficult - I made it way harder on myself than necessary. The puzzle is definitely to blame for the incorrect spelling of LASERDISC... wonder what level of controversy that's causing on the blogs. I had trouble with FRESHENER, the [Toning skin lotion] - stuck in an L early on to give me FLESH-something, which obscured the crossing NIAGARA. I was rejected by the applet twice, first finding a simple typo, then finally discovering FRESHEVER crossing MAHARAVI, where the V should be an N. I should have figured out that the Indian royalty would involve RANI, but I was stuck in "unfamiliar brand name" mode for the stupid lotion.

Newsday Stumper took 2 minutes for the final, NW quadrant to fall. I stupidly put in TIA instead of TI-, probably because of the feminine noun "familia" in the clue. The other wrong guess obscuring things was AVAST for APORT as [Tar term]. I knew exactly where the "rash" clue was going, but couldn't come up with ALLERGISTS until I fixed the wrong entries.

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