OK fine, I posted my Blindauer time. Disclaimer, after about 10 minutes, I looked up what element 18 was, and it went much more smoothly from there. Anyone who knows their peridodic table better than I would have a much easier go of it.
NYT was going quite smoothly today, until I hit a major wall in the NE. It's nice to see Byron's byline again.
Solved about half of the Blindauer in 23 minutes, but had zero idea where it was going. With the answer, still don't have an idea. Anxiously awaiting Matt's write-up at the Fiend blog :)
well, i started the puzzle by writing down the name of element #18 at the top, and worked from there. so yeah, that was pretty good. still took me a while. awesome puzzle, though.
i don't think i can remember the last time i "won" two puzzles, let alone two in a day. of course, plot and howard haven't posted yet, but beating dan is rare enough.
on the section 8, 15:33 is when i had it down to just one answer left (the supporting actress nominee). i futzed around and never did make it work, and eventually concluded that it was somebody i'd never heard of (closest i came to making a name was TERITA GRIMES). never imagined that i had an answer wrong: AQUATIC instead of SEMI-AQUATIC, and the actress was somebody whose name i've seen many times (though never outside of a crossword).
(I'm ignoring the above comment because I haven't solved that one yet!)
Re PB2 -- I was flailing for 2-3 minutes trying various two-letter rebus squares -- RA? RO? RE? -- and nothing would stick. Then I was like, "oh, element #18 must be - yup, the ars, they're gone."
And like everybody else save Rex, I had trouble with the NE of the NYT...
I knew what Element 18 without looking it up, and grokked the gimmick pretty quickly when I saw 23A only required four letters to be entered. It was a slow but steady slog through that one.
Similarly, the NE corner of Byron's NYT puzzle didn't give me much trouble. I got 13D right away, and that allowed me to put in a good guess for 9A, which in turn gave me 14D. From there, the rest of the corner fell into place.
The biggest stumbling block for me today was 42D of Stan's Newsday puzzle, since the right answer shared four of the six letters with the obvious, but wrong, answer.
Joon, you can keep the win on PB2. If I had solved it on paper, I would have had an error because I keep mixing up a certain sculptor with a certain fictional pterosaur. I only noticed the error because happy-pencil didn't show up.
I got the gimmick fairly early on, though. Immediately hought it was an AR rebus, entered GRAMMAR, saw it stil didnt fit, knew that the nearby godfather clues needed four-letter answers (neri and rota), then I had the aha moment.
Unfortunately, with Godfather on my mind, I later fell straight into the Deniro/Renfro trap on the Stumper. Also had PLAY instead of ELEM for the 'No' clue, and CLUB player instead of CARD player. I was this close to sleeping with the fishes.
11 comments:
I gave it my all for 45 minutes.
I had most of it filled in until the wall hit me in the central-northeast section.
10:00+? This was definatley one designed for you, Dan.
^
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The above comment refers to the Blindauer, as if you didn't know.
OK fine, I posted my Blindauer time. Disclaimer, after about 10 minutes, I looked up what element 18 was, and it went much more smoothly from there. Anyone who knows their peridodic table better than I would have a much easier go of it.
NYT was going quite smoothly today, until I hit a major wall in the NE. It's nice to see Byron's byline again.
Al, I looked up the element,too, after about 10 minutes.
Trust me. You did just fine.
Solved about half of the Blindauer in 23 minutes, but had zero idea where it was going. With the answer, still don't have an idea. Anxiously awaiting Matt's write-up at the Fiend blog :)
About half of my 30:30 time on the NYT was in the northeast corner.
well, i started the puzzle by writing down the name of element #18 at the top, and worked from there. so yeah, that was pretty good. still took me a while. awesome puzzle, though.
i don't think i can remember the last time i "won" two puzzles, let alone two in a day. of course, plot and howard haven't posted yet, but beating dan is rare enough.
on the section 8, 15:33 is when i had it down to just one answer left (the supporting actress nominee). i futzed around and never did make it work, and eventually concluded that it was somebody i'd never heard of (closest i came to making a name was TERITA GRIMES). never imagined that i had an answer wrong: AQUATIC instead of SEMI-AQUATIC, and the actress was somebody whose name i've seen many times (though never outside of a crossword).
(I'm ignoring the above comment because I haven't solved that one yet!)
Re PB2 -- I was flailing for 2-3 minutes trying various two-letter rebus squares -- RA? RO? RE? -- and nothing would stick. Then I was like, "oh, element #18 must be - yup, the ars, they're gone."
And like everybody else save Rex, I had trouble with the NE of the NYT...
I knew what Element 18 without looking it up, and grokked the gimmick pretty quickly when I saw 23A only required four letters to be entered. It was a slow but steady slog through that one.
Similarly, the NE corner of Byron's NYT puzzle didn't give me much trouble. I got 13D right away, and that allowed me to put in a good guess for 9A, which in turn gave me 14D. From there, the rest of the corner fell into place.
The biggest stumbling block for me today was 42D of Stan's Newsday puzzle, since the right answer shared four of the six letters with the obvious, but wrong, answer.
Joon, you can keep the win on PB2. If I had solved it on paper, I would have had an error because I keep mixing up a certain sculptor with a certain fictional pterosaur. I only noticed the error because happy-pencil didn't show up.
I got the gimmick fairly early on, though. Immediately hought it was an AR rebus, entered GRAMMAR, saw it stil didnt fit, knew that the nearby godfather clues needed four-letter answers (neri and rota), then I had the aha moment.
Unfortunately, with Godfather on my mind, I later fell straight into the Deniro/Renfro trap on the Stumper. Also had PLAY instead of ELEM for the 'No' clue, and CLUB player instead of CARD player. I was this close to sleeping with the fishes.
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