Saturday, November 17, 2007

Saturday, November 17, 2007 - Brad Wilber

Y'all are so spoiled. I can't imagine doin' this puzzle solving and write up every single night. maybe if i wasn't so slow at solving and typing it'd be easier, but i still think Linda G. deseveres a big round of applause. OR ELSE! (50d: Goons last words)

Rick B. here, aka cornbread hell. Our gracious hostess is takin’ the night off for some well deserved down time with Don.


(don’t you dare tell her I said this, but I think the truth is that our gracious hostess had a premonition of what a killer of a puzzle this was gonna be and flat chickened out. Ya think?)


-----------XXX------------


This sucker took me just shy of 2 hours, without googling, to almost finish. OK, i did leave one square blank. Yeah, yeah... I'm sure that’s a laughable *accomplishment* to our 6d: ORANGEY (Like a bad spray-on tan) friend, but I’m kinda proud of it, myself.


I mean, how many wtfs did YOU find?


11a: MITA (certain copier), 18a: ROEG (“The Man Who Fell to Earth” director), 46d: DR. AZIZ (Character on trial in “A Passage to India”), and 58d: SHIH (“__ Ching,” classic book of Chinese poetry) are just the most egregious of mine.

Hey, I saw those movies in the theater and have even read the I Ching by Lao Tse and even knew it *might* be “Tao Ta Ching”, but Noooooo, still too many freakin' letters! It’s SHIH...


And that, my friends, is what I love about Saturday NYT Crossword Puzzles. I get challenged. I get to figure stuff out by the crosses and by logic and by who knows where or what.


Nope, no pictures or links today. Sorry folks. And yes, I know...you’re used to Linda pointing out all the clever stuff like, 4d: PTA (Org. addressing class conflict) and all the other delightful clueing, of which there is so much here.


So why don’t y’all throw out some of your favorites? There’re a whole bunch of good ones here. Talk among yourselves, I’m a little verklempt.


I’ll leave you now with the *almost* completed grid. (go ahead, scoff if you must and correct as you will.)


Thanks for visiting,
rick.


[Oh, & I meant to say; i thought the NW was a cinch. (bein' a Unitarian, that 10 letter gimme made it so) and the SW was nowhere near 35d: DUTY FREE (Like some airport shopping) maybe because I’m such a nerd that even though TYRE was a gimme, GEEK kept wantin’ and wantin' to be a nerd for way too long.

And besides, I’ve never been to an OXYGEN BAR. Have you? C’mon, what in the cornbread hell is up with that? Is it like astronaut training or something?]


I think Brad Wilber rocks. so does Wilbur Post.




ok, maybe just one picture...

Wil
-bur!


6 comments:

DONALD said...

OMG!

dann walsh said...

oh, my linda... but what a deep voice you have!

lynx-eyed? never hoid o' dat b'fore!

the 8 ten-letter answers were all abetted by their crosses...


dann

wendy said...

Going in for a brain transplant ... be back sometime when I'm smarter.

Anonymous said...

This was the first non-google Saturday for me in a long time, so, of course, I loved it, though it kept me up way longer than I expected to be last night. It's the kind of challenge that makes Friday and Saturday so much fun for me. Go at it, go at it, go at it until it's done.

Loved bubbler, crazy horse, duty free, oxygen bars, grand canal, ipodnano, and ratatatat cause they gave me a toehold in each area. I dropped in a lot of "could bes" that turned out to be correct, so tralala, I was skipping metaphorically about this funfilled romp.

Re: oxygen bars... they are places to go that you can literally pay ($10-$20) to breathe in oxygen from a tank. I looked into it as a business venture a few years back when they were popping up in California. Imagine charging people to do what they should/could do on their own for free. I suggest breathing deeply for twenty minutes TID. But I guess if you live in NY or LA, you might prefer to do this indoors with a mask on!

Thanks for the substitution, Rick. See you tomorrow, Linda G.

cornbread hell said...

donald, i know. makes you REALLY appreciate linda's commentaries, doesn't it.

dann, thanks to your writeup i finally *got* TER/TESTACY/BLATS. i was amazed that my other guesses were apparently correct.

wendy, stubbornness and lucky guesses go a long way.

rikki, your welcome.

Linda G said...

rikki, congratulations on nailing a tough one. I did finish in a reasonable time, but only because I Googled two or three things...which opened up a couple of areas.

Thanks, cornbread. You know I didn't have a clue it would be tough ; )