Alas...

[tahnan]

Dear Mike Selinker,

You're breaking my heart. I believed in you, I really did, and after your last Games mini-hunt, I was willing to ascribe your apparent faults to your editors.

But after your three-puzzle-suite in the February Games, I'm so much less sure. The first puzzle was all right, and the third puzzle was OKish (though why would you use a phrasing as awkward as ONE FROM PINKY'S CAGE?). But in the second puzzle, why, why, why would you use the extremely vague SEATTLE AREA ROCK ACT when you could have used, oh, anything else?

Please, Mike, bring something good to San Antonio this summer. I want to believe.

--Lance

(and yes, I know that Mike could conceivably read this. Hi, Mike.)

Comments

[lunchboy.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to be buying that issue of Games, so it's hard for me to say why one single clue that you thought was too vague ruined the puzzle...oh, unless it was the final answer for the puzzle? Because, yeah, final clues ought to be unambiguous, or at least checkable. (That is, if there was some way that the particular rock act needed was easily confirmed with the other two answers, then it doesn't strike me as automatically bad...especially if the answer was, like, Nirvana or Pearl Jam. If it was someone more obscure, like Screaming Trees or Mudhoney or something, then, well, hmm.)

[(Anonymous)]

Since we're into spoiler territory here: yes, this was the final answer for the puzzle. And since it was a three-puzzle suite, you didn't have a whole series of answers with something in common; all you had to check it with were two other answers, NERVE and BRAIN. (Answer below.)

The correct answer to puzzle 2 is, I think, somewhere between Nirvana and Mudhoney. (I definitely knew their music; I didn't have the slightest idea they were from Seattle.) "Nirvana", who are (a) famous and (b) famous for being from Seattle, could have been justifiable there.

In particular: the answer was HEART. Even if sticking with the musical theme, one could use ANN AND NANCY WILSON (which is, admittedly, an odd number of letters, and the mechanism here used two letters per answer), or BARRACUDA SINGERS, or other things along these lines. With so little to check your answer against, I just can't see any reason to use a clue that vague.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

(and, grrr, stupid computer lost all my settings...that was, obviously, Tahnan.)