Saturday, August 12, 2017

My time: 50:27.  (The record for Saturday is 23:37.  Today's wasn't a cakewalk for me.)

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I don't often even finish the Saturday puzzle, but I slogged through this one and finally made it.  There were a lot of wrong fills and flat-out guesses as to letters.  I'm not going to list every single thing I had trouble with, because that would be a joyless exercise. I really didn't have fun with this one because it had so many letters I couldn't make educated guesses at, and it didn't even have a theme!

For "ability to learn and adapt," I had *BRAIN ELASTICITY, which messed up the downs for a while.  The preferred and more common term, of course, is BRAIN PLASTICITY.

I liked THRILLA for "start of a big fight?"  The Thrilla in Manila, baby!  I don't know jack about team sports, but I do know my boxing history.

I have never heard of the term CANTAB for a Cambridge student, despite being half British.  And yet there it is.  That word really held up the northwest works for a good long time.  I kept guessing: Cantib?  Cantin?  Canton?  Cantub?

The reason for the guessing is because I have never heard of ATLI, who was "Gudrun's victim, in Norse myth."  Gudrun is the sister of king Gunnar, who falls in love with Sigurd and later marries Atli, to whom she feeds his sons, kills him, and burns down his hall.  Charming tales those Germans wove, eh?

I knew that a guy named OLDS started a car company, but could not put together his first name, RANSOM.

For "some postgraduate study" I stuck with *LAB, which doesn't really make sense, but I have never heard of Arthur WYNNE, "inventor of the crossword puzzle."

Finally, for "split" I had *REND, then *RENT, and finally discovered WENT after starting stupidly at *RARBIRD for way too long.

Some days you get the bear... The bear didn't get me today, but it was way too much of a fight for my tastes.  The bear wasn't worth it.  I don't even like bear meat.