Sunday November 25th 2018, NY Times Crossword
Sunday Average: 49:24
Best Sunday: 21:55
I started this puzzle at midnight as a passenger on the drive back from Dollywood to Bloomington. I think it’s the first time while writing this blog that I’ve completed a solve the night before, although I believe most professional crossword bloggers choose this method to be sure their write-up appears in a timely fashion, something I’ve yet to achieve, except sometimes when I enjoyed a time difference advantage.
With the crossword title of “Silent Finales” and a NW corner that I handled with BRIO, I thought I was in good shape to crush this puzzle. As it turns out, that was the BEST CASE scenario and the puzzle was a TAD more difficult than I anticipated. The theme was straightforward, as it involves adding silent letters to common phrases to generate some wackily clued new answers. One of the main hang-ups I had was that I put in UNspokEnFORE for “Warning not given on a golf course” instead of UNCALLED FORE, which honestly makes more sense and let me run through the last of the puzzle in the end.
There was an awful lot of trivia that I had absolutely nothing going for. EFTS are, apparently, baby newts. I didn’t know ADELIE Penguins. Actress SHARI Belafonte and Edward ALBEE (writer of “The Zoo Story) were stacked on top of each other and also total unknowns to me. ISSEI refers to a first generation Japanese immigrant to the Americas. LA BREA and ENSENADA? Nope. All in all, this was a SURGE of new information for me and, as you can see, it cost me a lot of time and trial and error.
I’m sad that SHALLOWS wasn’t clued as modern shark classic movie starring Blake Lively, but I’ll still take it.
I’m a big fan of EWOKS clued as “Moon race?”
Comments
Post a Comment