Brian solves Thursday’s puzzle (2-26-09)
Mere hours from the ACPT, and I was all excited by the arrival of this week’s Thursday puzzle. To me, Thursday is the average line for the tournament puzzles. Maybe I got too excited, though, because this Thursday seemed like a practically themeless, not-quite-as-hard-as-a-Friday puzzle. I guess that’s all good, but it left me wanting more. On the other hand, it’s by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who makes some of the most wonderful puzzles. As a long-time fan of his work, I found enough of this grid enjoyable to overcome my early frustration. You should check out his website at www.brendanemmettquigley.com.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but the theme seemed merely to be a bit self-referential, in that four clues contained Q words:
- 20A. Residence : LIVING QUARTERS
- 25A. It has to be asked : BURNING QUESTION
- 43A. Alumni weekend V.I.P. : HOMECOMING QUEEN
- 48A. Many Haydn compositions : STRING QUARTETS
[Revision: I've since checked a couple other sites for thoughts on the theme. Orange thinks it's that they all contain "IN GQ," or perhaps just "GQ." I see that, of course, but I'm not sure what's so notable about GQ. It's a magazine, sure, but why a theme? Seems the Q is just as logical to me.]
A handful of things I didn’t know showed up here:
- 1D. Wandering ___ : JEW. I guess some of them wander. I never heard this term before.
- 3D. ___ Davis, “A Girl Like Me” documentarian : KIRI. Bette, Ossie, Geena, Sammy. All Davises have five letters in their name. Who does this Kiri think he/she is?
- 17A. Delft, e.g. : WARE. Because I didn’t know 1D or 3D, I had a lot of trouble with this. I still don’t quite know what it is.
- 26D. “In ___” (1993 #1 album) : UTERO. I must not have listened to any popular music ever.
- 30D. Old hwy. from Detroit to Seattle : U.S. TEN. I believe that now, U.S. Ten is somewhere much further south than either Detroit or Seattle. This must confuse the hell out of the commuters.
- 36A. Middle year of Nero’s reign : LXI. Sure, but an alternate clue could be “random year sometime with letters instead of numbers.”
- 40A. ___ de couer : CRI. Apparently, this word doesn’t always follow “dernier.”
- 46A. 1961 Top 10 hit “Hello Mary ___” : LOU
- 49D. Lacking depth : TWO-D. Mike Nothnagel, take note. I actually knew this one this time.
- 50D. Opposite of pobre : RICO. I assume this is “rich”?
- 61A. Finnish architect Alvar ___ : AALTO. This crosses with 53D. Certain castrato (ALTO), which is kind of cute.
The tournament is fast upon us. Tomorrow (Friday), there is a panel presentation at 8:00pm. Ryan and I will be talking about something, although we don’t know quite what. Maybe it’s about how much we like blogging. Most likely, Ryan will mumble incoherently about something, and I’ll shake my head is sincere embarrassment. Hopefully, no one in the audience will ask us anything to which we don’t know the answer. If you are there, and want to ask us something, make it easy. Remember — we are the lowliest of bloggers. We know far less than the others. Be kind.
Saturday will begin the puzzles. We may try to get someone like Tyler or Dan to blog for us, since they’ll have tons of free time after they solve the tourney puzzles in about fourteen seconds. Ryan and I are likely to use all the time allotted to break our pencils, leaving little time to blog a freakin’ Saturday puzzle, let alone Day One or Day Two of the tournament. But we’ll see.
See you Friday. And if you’re in Brooklyn this weekend, we might really see you Friday!
