Indulge me
Mar. 5th, 2003 03:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tahnanThose not interested in crosswords, or those who still intend to go back and do the NYT crosswords of Jan 27-Feb 2, read no further.
This was a Bad Week for me. I finally got around to doing it, just now, and man, that sucked. The worst of the eight weeks I've done this year--both in total time (87 minutes, five minutes slower than my second-worst) and in points (535 below ideal).
What happened? Well, I was off to a good start. Nothing astonishing, but clean and somewhat fast for the first four crosswords.
Then Quigley bit me. Quigley always bites me. I generally don't actually like his crosswords--the fills are more or less all right, but I just have a great deal of trouble doing them, and I'm not always happy with his clueing. This one, Friday Jan 31, though...I was off to a good start. Zipping through. I actually finished almost all of it in about eight minutes, which is five minutes faster than my average Friday time.
Except that I'd spent half a minute staring at a crossing I didn't know, and then a minute at the end on that crossing again, trying to come up with a reasonable guess. Eventually I filled in something, called it "9:50"--still quite fast--and put my pencil down.
The problem was that I didn't know the "First Russian Literature Nobelist" or "Large red hog with drooping ears", or the thing crossing them, "Altdorf is its capital." It turned out that these are, respectively, BUNIN, DUROC, and URI (you know, the Swiss canton). So I ended up with a relatively low score there.
Then Saturday...ugh. Finished in 29:40, twenty seconds before my alloted time ran out. Clean, in fact, but I struggled through this one, sweating blood the whole way.
And then Sunday. 25:20 (slower than average), and with a mistake. And why was I slow on this one? Because it was bad, that's why.
I mean, I'm not an expert on what makes a good crossword. I suspect that lots and lots of abbreviations aren't part of it (three across entries in a row: APO, STR, ASSN). But I know that good theme entries are a requirement.
OK, so the theme is "Artful Expressions." And I suspected that we'd be dealing with puns on the names of artists, and indeed, I was right. The first one I got was the (predictable) "I demand to see cash up-front!", which is SHOW ME THE MONET. Well and good. But after that...
There's "That's very fitting!": HOW ARPROPRIATE. Enh. Then there's "You're not OK with that, bub?": WYETH THERE A PROBLEM? That only sort of works, but not really--the pun relies on tacking "why" onto the front of "is there a problem?", which seems like it ought to be the answer. But, compared to the other three, this is stellar.
We also have "It's a group effort, guys!": WARHOL IN THIS TOGETHER. "We're all" and "Warhol" just don't sound enough like. Below that, one that gave me trouble for a while, namely "Is that a new man you're dating?": WHO'S DEGAS I SAW YOU WITH? Huh? "Who's de gah...?" It doesn't sound remotely right, and I got stuck trying to get WHO'S THE GOYA SAW YOU WITH to fit--also not quite right, but much closer.
And finally, "This could lead to something big!": WHAT AN HOPPERTUNITY. Unless Edward Hopper was one of those Cockneys born in New York or, for some other reason, pronounced his name "Opper," ...AN HOPPER... doesn't work at all. It's just plain wrong.
So in the end, I feel like I shouldn't feel bad that this crossword took me so long, because without good theme entries to work with, there's no wonder I couldn't piece it together. I feel like I shouldn't, but I do; I'm annoyed at how badly I did, relative to how I want to be doing and how I usually do. I'm also annoyed at my lack of consistency.
Sigh. I should stop stressing. But.
This was a Bad Week for me. I finally got around to doing it, just now, and man, that sucked. The worst of the eight weeks I've done this year--both in total time (87 minutes, five minutes slower than my second-worst) and in points (535 below ideal).
What happened? Well, I was off to a good start. Nothing astonishing, but clean and somewhat fast for the first four crosswords.
Then Quigley bit me. Quigley always bites me. I generally don't actually like his crosswords--the fills are more or less all right, but I just have a great deal of trouble doing them, and I'm not always happy with his clueing. This one, Friday Jan 31, though...I was off to a good start. Zipping through. I actually finished almost all of it in about eight minutes, which is five minutes faster than my average Friday time.
Except that I'd spent half a minute staring at a crossing I didn't know, and then a minute at the end on that crossing again, trying to come up with a reasonable guess. Eventually I filled in something, called it "9:50"--still quite fast--and put my pencil down.
The problem was that I didn't know the "First Russian Literature Nobelist" or "Large red hog with drooping ears", or the thing crossing them, "Altdorf is its capital." It turned out that these are, respectively, BUNIN, DUROC, and URI (you know, the Swiss canton). So I ended up with a relatively low score there.
Then Saturday...ugh. Finished in 29:40, twenty seconds before my alloted time ran out. Clean, in fact, but I struggled through this one, sweating blood the whole way.
And then Sunday. 25:20 (slower than average), and with a mistake. And why was I slow on this one? Because it was bad, that's why.
I mean, I'm not an expert on what makes a good crossword. I suspect that lots and lots of abbreviations aren't part of it (three across entries in a row: APO, STR, ASSN). But I know that good theme entries are a requirement.
OK, so the theme is "Artful Expressions." And I suspected that we'd be dealing with puns on the names of artists, and indeed, I was right. The first one I got was the (predictable) "I demand to see cash up-front!", which is SHOW ME THE MONET. Well and good. But after that...
There's "That's very fitting!": HOW ARPROPRIATE. Enh. Then there's "You're not OK with that, bub?": WYETH THERE A PROBLEM? That only sort of works, but not really--the pun relies on tacking "why" onto the front of "is there a problem?", which seems like it ought to be the answer. But, compared to the other three, this is stellar.
We also have "It's a group effort, guys!": WARHOL IN THIS TOGETHER. "We're all" and "Warhol" just don't sound enough like. Below that, one that gave me trouble for a while, namely "Is that a new man you're dating?": WHO'S DEGAS I SAW YOU WITH? Huh? "Who's de gah...?" It doesn't sound remotely right, and I got stuck trying to get WHO'S THE GOYA SAW YOU WITH to fit--also not quite right, but much closer.
And finally, "This could lead to something big!": WHAT AN HOPPERTUNITY. Unless Edward Hopper was one of those Cockneys born in New York or, for some other reason, pronounced his name "Opper," ...AN HOPPER... doesn't work at all. It's just plain wrong.
So in the end, I feel like I shouldn't feel bad that this crossword took me so long, because without good theme entries to work with, there's no wonder I couldn't piece it together. I feel like I shouldn't, but I do; I'm annoyed at how badly I did, relative to how I want to be doing and how I usually do. I'm also annoyed at my lack of consistency.
Sigh. I should stop stressing. But.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-05 05:56 am (UTC)The problem was that I didn't know the "First Russian Literature Nobelist" or "Large red hog with drooping ears", or the thing crossing them, "Altdorf is its capital." It turned out that these are, respectively, BUNIN, DUROC, and URI (you know, the Swiss canton). So I ended up with a relatively low score there.
YOWCH. I wouldn't have known any of those, though I might have come up with URI from context and a couple of letters.
I was doing a Quigley from the "Will Shortz's Favorite Crosswords" collection last night. I don't know what it is about his puzzles, but I find them tougher than most, too.
Who was responsible for the Sunday?
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-05 09:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-05 10:00 am (UTC)If it makes you feel any better, I just clawed my way through a David Kahn Sunday puzzle from December. Nice theme, actually, but for some reason I found it difficult. Took me 17 minutes, which isn't going to cut it in terms of my ever making the top 10!
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-05 08:12 am (UTC)