Thursday, November 15, 2017

My time: 19:24.

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Alex Eylar presents some logic problems in today's puzzle, which is satisfyingly baffling as you solve and with a nice "a-ha" reward when you get it.  I figured out early that the theme clues had to be meta in some way, but I wasn't quite sure how.  "See 58 Across" at 17 Across leads to "see 17 across," and thus both answers are TAUTOLOGY.  This is the first answer I sussed out, once I saw the -ology suffix.  "See 25 Across" at 25 Across gives us a RECURSION.  "See 66 Across" (which doesn't exist) is A WILD GOOSE CHASE.  And "see ?? Across" is AMBIGUITY.  Pretty clever, all, and as a philosophy student in my day, I appreciated it.

The fill didn't give me much trouble, but there is the usual AMBIGUITY.

For "what " " contains" I wanted to put speech, but it doesn't fit, and considered *SPEAK (??) but it's the equally meta SPACE.

For "be against" I wanted to put *ANTI, though that isn't quite right.  It's the other meaning, ABUT.

ERIC Rohmer, "French New Wave director," is best known for the films My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. 

I somehow dredged up the name of Jeff PROBST from the old memory fiche, but "Host Mike of Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Gotta Do It" is unknown to me.  Mike ROWE is also the narrator of Deadliest Catch. 

Did you know CRISCO had the tagline "cooks who know trust Crisco"?  Me neither.

I'm shocked to discover that NIBLET is an actual word that means something.  The Oxford dictionary says it's a trademark.

EGESTS is also a new word to me.  To egest something is to discharge or excrete.

Clever clues: "Alternative to an elbow, maybe" is PSST.  "What you might see the big game on" is SAFARI.  "One who has a ball at work?" is SEER.  "Something you have in a chair" is LAP.

Well, that took AGES.  ISLE try to remember some of these.