Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: July 29, 2020

























My time: 12:28, a full two and a half minutes slower than my average.  Man!  This one beat me like a red-headed MAGAt.

Theme: STRONG PASSWORD ("it may require letters, a number, and a special character," as seen in the highlighted answers).

I had a plethora of wrong first attempts in this one.  For "small building blocks" I put *LEGOS; it's ATOMS.  Well played, ma'am/sir!  For "things finished with handshakes" (aren't we in a post-shake world now?) I put *DEALS but it's PACTS.  For "apt rhyme for casino" I put *KINO!  That's a good answer, dammit!  But no, it's RENO, argh.  For hospital patients who are "post-_____" I put *ICU for some reason but it's OPS.  For "friendly honk" I tried *BEEP but it's TOOT.  For "venture a thought" I put *SPEAK but it's OPINE, of course.  That was too bold of me. Finally, I took "bowling game" to mean "one game of bowling" so I put *FRAME but it meant "type of bowling game" and is BOCCE.

"Breathful" for AIR really got me.  I was thinking of it as an adjective.  What a breathful morning!

"Imitates" is DOES?  I can't think of an example in which that is true, except in "monkey see, monkey do," which implies an object to both verbs.  This is a bad clue.

I didn't like "Bit of paperless reading" for EBOOK.  Why bit?  That implies something small and brief.  I wanted to put EBOOK but that word made me think it would be something like E-ZINE or some crap.

Alces alces is the MOOSE, or elk as it's called in Europe.  The word "elk" in North American English refers to a completely different species of deer, Cervus canadensis, also called the wapiti.  I hope this clears all your moose-terminology-related questions up.

I don't think Japanese tennis pro Naomi OSAKA has come up before.

Ypsilanti school Eastern Michigan University, or EMU, came up in 2018.

I had a vague uncertain trace of memory of IBANKER and it turns out it was featured way back in October 2017.

Wow, I really screwed the pooch on this one.  I feel like a DOLT, but I also think some of the clues were poorly written.  Well, ADIEU to today's and here's to Thursday's attempt.

No comments:

Post a Comment