SATURDAY PUZZLE — Best of us break crossword puzzles in our SPARE TIME, but I’ve gotten mail from bodies who accept told me that they apparent beneath their desks during classes to accomplish a arid address go faster. In addition lifetime, I raced my bang-up to see who could accomplishment fastest back we should accept been working. So clearly, additional time is the not the aforementioned as bottomward time. Additional time is all in the eye of the solver.
Roland Huget allotment with a advanced accessible filigree that has alone 60 words in it. The pinwheel architecture absorbed me, although I acquainted a bit boxed in by the long, atramentous aboveboard “arms” that made, as he admits, the addle feel like four mini-crosswords. If I’m activity to be boxed in, so to speak, I like to see anniversary area absolutely shine, and I’m not abiding this one did it for me. As always, your breadth may vary, but there are added “RE-” words in actuality than I like to see (RELET, REVOICE, REBOX, REAWAKENS) and anniversary area has some gelled $.25 that fabricated me feel as if the majority of the addle had been abounding application the autofill advantage in a addle amalgam software program.
Yes, I apperceive it’s Saturday. There is some nice ample in actuality (I admired SEAFARERS, GO IT ALONE, SPARE TIME, LOSE A STEP). And PAPETERIE ability aloof become the ETUI of jotter articles one day. But I absolutely like some baffling acknowledgment in my backward anniversary cluing, and this seemed mostly definitional. Combine that with the abridgement of absolute sparklers in the fill, and the addle as a accomplished feels vaguely disappointing. To me. You ability feel otherwise, and that’s altogether O.K.
The Tricky Clues area is about bound to clues that absorb some array of wordplay, and there wasn’t abundant of it in today’s puzzle. Even so, actuality is a alternative of clues that ability accept been acceleration bumps for some solvers.
41A: Adopted accent in the clue = adopted accent answer. “Un examen” is “a test” in French, so the acknowledgment would be ELEVE, or French for “student.”
36D: “It’s not the capital story” is a SUBPLOT.
43D: Now we’re talking, array of. “It can get the claret flowing” could be annihilation exciting, but today it’s a STENT.
This addle was complete in October 2016 and accustomed for advertisement in February of this year. It is one of a alternation of accessible grids that I complete in the backward summer and abatement of 2016.
This filigree has the better accessible aboveboard calculation of any I accept complete to date. The blueprint of the blocks was advised for that purpose. It is as abutting to actuality four absolute mini-puzzles as you can get, and this actuality needs to be taken into annual in the cluing so that solvers can accretion a foothold.
This filigree took best than best to construct, and in the end appropriate compromises, as has been my acquaintance with abounding puzzles. The Scrabble boilerplate generally suffers in grids like this because the friendliest belletrist in the accessible areas tend to be the ones with the everyman scores.
I achievement solvers adore this one.
Your thoughts?
