Brian: Monday, 3-17-08
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
New York Times 7:38 (or 6:06 with one square wrong)
New York Sun 6:02
LA Times 4:31
CrosSynergy 13:21
USA Today 18:19
Universal 13:17
(my stories come after the link… read on!)
New York Times
by C.W. Stewart, edited by Will Shortz
Generally easy, with the gimmick answers being exclamations somehow linked to historical figures:
- 17A. What President Washington said upon winning the lottery? (BY GEORGE)
- 23A. What flagmaker Ross said …? (HEAVENS TO BETSY)
- 33A. What Miss Molly said …? (GOOD GOLLY)
- 42A. What Galileo said …? (OH MY STARS)
- 47A. What the Big Bad Wolf said …? (WELL, BLOW ME DOWN)
- 62A. What Noah Webster said …? (OH MY WORD)
First — are we supposed to assume that this is what all of them said upon winning the lottery? Maybe, although I certainly didn’t see that connection between clues when solving. And second, and this is bigger — why do two of the answers start with “Oh my”? In fact, I was only solving in one direction to start, and I had (and was certain of) ON MY WORD for Noah Webster. It ended up being the one square I spent another 90 seconds finding… Seems weak to have two theme answers start with the same two words like that.
New York Sun
by Francis Heaney, edited by Peter Gordon
Fairly straightforward, I suppose. I didn’t get the trick to the long answers (excepting noticing that IRISH SETTER was… uh, Irish), and had to seek out another blog to inform me that the opening words of each of the four long answers complete the phrase KISS ME I’M IRISH. That is precisely what my wife told me this morning, and I plan to continue obeying her wishes throughout the day.
Los Angeles Times
by David W. Cromer, edited by Rich Norris
I was going to keep a spreadsheet of my times and such, and see how I did over the course of this next year, but now I haven’t started. I’m so weirdly OCD about some things that since I started blogging without tracking times, I can’t start tracking times now without revisiting puzzles, and that’s not fair because I already did some of the puzzles, and oh hell, what will I do?
CrosSynergy
by Rich Norris
A stupid math error was my biggest obstacle to this one. Math. Me! MMXX divided by X does not equal CCXX, for those wondering (it’s actually CCII, duh). Therefore, there is no such television show as Dr. Uxidare or Dr. Exodare or anything else like it (enjoy DR. KILDARE reruns, if you can find them). Nor is there a letter of the Arabic alphabet known as alxf (ALIF), as fun as that sounds. Also of note is that chefs do not salt things totally, they salt them TO TASTE.
The theme didn’t really help, as I think I know less about Ireland than I did yesterday. My friend Dan says that CrosSynergy puzzles are similar to New York Times Wednesdays. I will combine that with my time of 13:21, salt it to taste, and eat it for breakfast.
USA Today: Saints For A Day
by John Underwood
I don’t know if USA Today operates on the same difficulty scale as the New York Times, but eighteen minutes is too long for a Monday. If this is a trend, and it gets harder from here, I now question who the USA Today is marketing their paper to.
From the title, I was looking for the names of saints, either in the clues or the answers. There were two “Patrick” clues, but either nothing else, or nothing else I noticed.
Universal: Where?
by Steven L. Zisser
Boring, and generally unsatisfying. If more of the Universal series are like this, I’ll skip them.
I’m tired, and have to go to work. Goodbye.
