Comments on: Ryan solves the NYT, 7-10-9

By: Linda G

Linda G — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:40 +0000

Just wanted to say hello…it's been a long time since I've commented on a blog. New job equals a lot of travel, but I still do the NYT every day…even if it's not on the day it's published. Smiled when I saw you still have a link to Madness.

BTW, this puzzle kicked my butt good.

By: joon

joon — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:56:27 +0000

yeah, i don't know about that etymology. on wikipedia it says acta is the plural of the latin noun actum, which would fit in better with what you said.

By: Brian Cimmet

Brian Cimmet — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:00:08 +0000

Joe, this is awesome. Thanks so much for the write-up of your process!

I think I may have had more trouble than Ryan in solving this one. I got the whole lower left pretty quickly (HUMOR ME/TOSCA/IMUS fell quickly, and then CRUEL AND UNUSUAL -- which is more my description for Friday puzzles than for Dolores and Antonio!), but then totally froze up. I had a handful of scattered answers elsewhere, some of which were right, some wrong, and nothing strung together.

I've never heard of CREVE COUER, which certainly slowed me down greatly. And I was reluctant to put RELATE into the grid, with \"30A. Like some relations\" as one of the other clues.

This was a good, hard struggle, and despite my mid-puzzle broken heart that I'd have to Google, I never succumbed.

Masterful work, Joe. Thanks for a great puzzle!

By: Brian Cimmet

Brian Cimmet — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:00:08 +0000

By: Brian Cimmet

Brian Cimmet — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:54:06 +0000

I got totally thrown off in this area because I tried DATA first. Whoops.

I am curious, though... This word seems to be of Latin descent, yes? I understand enough Latin to know that DATUM -> DATA, but how do ACTUS become ACTA? I thought -US words (masc. sing.) because -I (masc. pl.). Or is this one of those awkward times when either the true Latin got warped as it turned into English and/or the word was just irregular in the first place?

Or am I trying too hard to make sense and just failing?

By: Brian Cimmet

Brian Cimmet — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:47:05 +0000

Webstered… Hee hee.

We do want to move the site, but we need to find high quality at a low (or preferably nonexistent) price. We have a couple ideas we're looking at, but it's hard to say.

Miguel — to be fair, I don't have any trouble with the comments and whatnot here, except when IntenseDebate sometimes crashes (which has nothing to do with us or our blog). What specific problems do you have? And feel free to just email to explain, if you want to avoid the comments…

By: miguel

miguel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:58:59 +0000

Joe is the Joseph Heller of puzzles to me…always humourous and deeply intellegent. Ryan, does his last name rhymes with puzzle? I have to go to another PC and another browser to post on this site and it limits my ability to tell my stories. I read that you are considering an alternative blogware. Please, you're breaking my heart with the current one.

Rosario means rosary to me and dolores means pains. I was in a bit of mental pain trying to get some progress on this one and the prayers helped. No Google, huh? Me too, but I Webstered it.

By: Joe Krozel

Joe Krozel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:23:29 +0000

As I filled various regions of the puzzle, I wanted to include entries that might relate remotely to the broken heart "theme." ROMANCERS, etc. I basically wanted solvers to go back make up an imaginary story …about, say, DOLORES and her beau ANTONIO who was CRUEL AND UNUSUAL … you can find one such story by Miguel on the Crossword Fiend blog. That sort of post-solving amusement is what I intended. It's just a way of having a puzzle halfway between themed and unthemed. So, that's the new territory I was hoping to explore.

By: Joe Krozel

Joe Krozel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:22:50 +0000

The fill in the center of the heart took many attempts. Fortunately, I could move around the black squares that cut the heart into workable subregions. Trial and error was the name of the game here. I kept adding more black squares to the tear until I got the desired result.

By: Joe Krozel

Joe Krozel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:22:14 +0000

CREVE COEUR was placed in the grid first, followed by three candidate 15-letter entries which segregate the puzzle into distinct regions: Divide and conquer strategy. These entries were selected to be somewhat theme-related. I worried that some would view this as a sloppy — but I rationalized that I could always claim this puzzle to be themeless …which it mainly is.

By: Joe Krozel

Joe Krozel — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:21:37 +0000

Hi guys: It looks like I have to submit my comments piecemeal, so please bear with me.

You may recall how many of my puzzles take on geometric shapes — or simply use the black squares in some visual manner. This time I wanted to depict a heart without an excess of black squares and without having to close off regions of the grid from one another. So, even though the black squares are not contiguous, the solver can still see the heart pattern. I was happy with that visual effect.

By: joon

joon — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:39:27 +0000

one of the best ways to be more smarterer is to look up stuff you don't know. here's dictionary.com:

ac⋅ta
–plural noun (often initial capital letter)
official records, as of acts, deeds, proceedings, transactions, or the like.
Origin: < L, neut. pl. of ?ctus, ptp. of agere to do; cf. act