![]() I just got frustrated as hell with all the proper names I did not know. Having fun because I really do enjoy most of David's puzzles. I loved the CICERO quote and JOY BUZZER, LAMB ROAST and OKEY DOKEY. I don't like to have a DNF but in this case I felt it was the same as calling over to a friend at the next table and asking "hey who was that dude nicknamed The Bus?" In the end I cheated and googled THE BUS to get that second T in BETTIS and that helped me fix everything else. I even thought maybe it had to do with spas in Germany. Then wanted some Michael Jackson impersonator. For a moment, I thought of LENO for Bad Impression. I had NOR ANY instead of NOT ANY and SPARE ME instead of DEARY ME (which I've only seen as Dearie) making it hard to see DENT. That section with BETTIS was a killer for me. I chuckled a few times at his witticisms but also grimaced at some of the knotty Natickish niches. Kudos to David Steinberg for a truly engaging if at times frustrating Friday puzzle. Perhaps if Christopher Nolan had directed it and had people killing each other for no reason other than GORE and leaving dead bodies around to rot and SPOIL you'd have found it amusing. And not a PARTY GIRL or BOY, for that matter. or so I'm told).Īnyone who doesn't find "Babes in Toyland" funny is a true stick-in-the-mud. Oh, and that SPORTY clue was brutal, too ( 48D: Containing a spoiler) (spoilers are those little raised attachments on the back of SPORTY cars that are supposed to decrease drag) (not to be confused with a "wing," which increases drag. I know "DEAR ME!" which seems a pretty good equivalent for. Pulled DEN and finally got GOP / GORE to work, and thus REPEAT (50A Do over), and then (finally!) a breakthough with TABBY, which made LAMB and OKEY both (eventually) visible. I also entered and retracted CURD at some point ( 56D: Bean _). GOP would've conflicted with GLUE, which really felt like the right answer at 43A: Stick it to? ( GORE). obviously they did not come before the Whigs, and b. ("Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error": CICERO) See how nothing wants to touch DEN? There's a reason! Also, I confused "successor" and "predecessor" in my head and so completely misunderstood 40D: Whigs' successor, briefly. The secret to fast solving is uncommitting to wrong answers. I never ever should've put DEN in there at 60D: Leopard spot ( ZOO). I put in SLEZAK (must've rung a bell) but then revoked it when nothing happened. This is after a brief struggle with KONG (?) ( 34D: Diddy _ (peanut-shooting Nintendo character)) and DENT (I had WELT) (41A: Bad impression?). Here's where the wheels came off, or started to wobble, at any rate: Obviously it's a useful prescription medication, a morally neutral term, but the context of the current crisis made it taste pretty bad. I have to say, though, that having OXYCONTIN in the puzzle, in the middle of an opioid epidemic-especially when the NYT's own top-of-the-home-page story today is about how the opioid epidemic has overwhelmed the foster care system-that was depressing. Lots of entertaining and unusual fill, with EVIL GRIN being probably my favorite. ![]() Puzzle quality, however, was above average for sure. If only I played Nintendo or watched a lot of daytime television, I might've set a Friday record. Later on, when I was very stuck in the only part of the puzzle that was at all hard, I was able to bail myself out because the TV show I've been devouring for the past couple weeks-the one set primarily at a country club in *New Jersey*-is called " RED OAKs" ( 44D: New Jersey's state tree). ![]() Just yesterday I watched the godawful "Babes in Toyland" (1934) starring Laurel & Hardy (I thought they were supposed to be funny) and one of the main figures in Toyland-the female lead, in fact: BO PEEP ( 1D: Children's character associated with a crook). ![]() Today was a day I got a lot of help from my winter vacation TV-viewing habits. ![]()
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