Too much coffee and cocoa on a cold day...up in the middle of the night...I see people are solving... Californians at midnight and ex-pats in the morning in Europe?...or just night-owls here? Looks like a tough puzz given that the gaudy times posted by the top ten are comparatively slow, even (I think) for Friday, with the #10 time clocking in at over 11 minutes...ok...let's give it a whirl...
Ah...beaten up badly in the SW...ATTACK A NOTE and ACCRUED were my key mistakes...had DYE but it seemed too easy...wanted something like THE OPEN for "Couples may be in it" to complement the golf answers DOUBLE BOGEY, SEVE, and TEE. Wanted a sports answer for "having a catch"...STEALS BASES in the SE was a good implicit misdirection to complement the nice sports-evoking misdirection of the clue...good job, Joe DiPietro and Will...TRICKY in a nice way.
Still had an incorrect signal after the SW finally yielded...burned up some time searching the grid before I realized CORE CORK should be PORE PORK...
The rest was a pretty mellow solve...I liked that the puzzle contained my father's name (HAL) and the name of an old NYC landmark in the building my grandfather once worked in (RAINBOW ROOM)...POWER OUTAGE was all too apropos given Sandy and the eight days we were lightless and heatless.
Let's see if Rex has posted...
Yep...agree on the shapely grid...TOURNEY never occurred to me, since I had CHESS. Forks and pins are pretty, btw...MetaRex is tempted to suggest that RealRex, fine aesthete that he is, look them up, but you sorta gotta understand chess to get why they're pretty. Ah...the usual problem for those of us who find beauty in math/logic. Verbal and artistic and musical beauty, although not necessarily transparent, can be...mathematical/logical beauty just ain't.
A number of the early commenters as well as Rex got drawn into the golf thang for "Couples"...yep, well done (sand) trap by Joe DiP. and/or Will.
Comments